Artwork Appreciation
Depicting roadside scenery is one way that Wu Yi-Tze uses to express his feelings for his hometown. In Front of Home shows a sloping road and the sheet-metal buildings of different heights belonging to neighbors are the kinds of scenery that he sees each time he returns home. He used a painting knife to layer the oil paint and bring out the blurred texture of the cement wall, and he used a rubbing technique to express the mottles. The disjointed, temporary sheet-metal structures express the pragmatic character of people in the countryside. In the eyes of a wandering son, these bland everyday scenes become expressions of family and homesickness. Each time he sees the neighbors’ houses and the familiar scenery, he cannot help but feel the contentment of having returned “home.”