Creating traditional-style stamps is Vu Kim Lien’s great passion

Vietnam’s top stamp artist Vu Kim Lien says she is a mere painter who was chosen by the art.

The village has been known for its paintings for at least 300 years.

Dong Ho paintings portray peace, tranquility and daily life, and reflect people’s yearning for a simple life.

Popular Dong Ho paintings include Chan trau (Herding buffaloes), Muc dong tha dieu (Herdsmen flying kites) and Dam cuoi chuot (The wedding of the rats).

Lien said: “Dong Ho paintings depicting animals have soft, distinctive strokes. These paintings are not only technically complicated but are also full of profound symbolic meanings.”

While several Dong Ho paintings depict the buffalo and pig, almost none of its paintings depict a dog or a dragon, animals from the Chinese zodiac.

Lien relied on her own creativity to design the Canh Thin (Year of the Dragon) stamps in 2000 and Binh Tuat (Year of the Dog) Tet stamps in 2006, which were both well received.

According to Lien, a distinguished artist doesn’t merely copy folk paintings into their stamps but must add novelty and originality to their stamp designs.

She has studied tranh tro giay, a kind of folk paper collage which the Chinese and Vietnamese often do for the Lunar New Year.

“Each country has its own style,” Lien said. “I want to create a distinctive, recognizable style for Vietnamese stamps.”

“Folk art with bold, vigorous strokes that are rich in color is an original Vietnamese style. The folk character is suitable for and conducive to Tet’s festive atmosphere.”

“It’s Lien’s great dedication, outstanding artistic skills coupled with thorough training that have guaranteed her success,” said painter Trinh Quoc Thu, former deputy director of the Vietnam Stamp Company.

Lien said artists can have a wealth of ideas to express but the limited space on a stamp, which is usually three centimeters by four centimeters, presents a big difficulty.

Another difficulty is that the artist paints on a surface which is four to six times larger than the actual stamp.

The painter must know how to maintain the colors among other details when the painting is printed on a smaller size on a stamp.

“Such skills can only be mastered after years of hard work,” Lien said.

Lien was born in 1962 in Hanoi.

“I began collecting stamps as a child, but no school offered training in stamp painting then. I thought stamps were my pastime and never expected to pursue a career in stamps.”

She studied graphics and interior design for 10 years.

When she was about to start work for the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Construction, her childhood dream of designing stamps was revived when she heard of the Vietnam Stamp Company’s opening for a stamp designer.

“That’s how the art chose me. I think that a painter must do all kinds of paintings. My training in graphics and interior design helps me a lot with the layout and color combination of stamps.”

Before 1993, Tet stamps featured sacred animals but artists didn’t adopt distinctive styles and didn’t do so systematically.

In 1993, the Vietnam Stamp Company, which belongs to the state-run Vietnam Post, chose Lien’s designs of a rooster from the Chinese zodiac signs as its first set of Lunar New Year postage stamps.

Lien’s folk-styled design for the Rooster set of stamps in 2005 was chosen by the company to set a common style for Vietnamese Tet stamps for the next 12 years.

She researches extensively on a subject before actually painting it.

Lien put a lot of effort into designing a set of stamps to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Dien Bien Phu victory in 2004.

The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was the climactic battle of the First Indochina War between French Union forces of the French Far East Expeditionary Corps, and Vietnamese revolutionary forces.

The battle took place between March and May 1954, and culminated in a massive French defeat that effectively ended the war.

Lien researched different materials and previously-made sets of stamp on the subject and traveled to Dien Bien several times for materials before actually creating the stamps.

The result of her efforts is a beautiful, highly-acclaimed, innovatively designed set portraying the Dien Bien soldier, north highlands women, the monument of victory and hoa ban, a kind of flower common in the northern mountainous region.

Lien’s painting won her high critical acclaim because it depicts the Vietnamese soldier with a different posture and shows off the country’s new image 50 years after the Dien Bien Phu victory.

In 2003, Lien also visited museums and history research associations to obtain materials for a set of stamps to commemorate the 95^th birthday of Ngo Gia Tu (1908-1935) – a pioneering revolutionary, one of the first members of the Vietnam Communist Party.

She even traveled to Tu’s hometown in northern Bac Ninh Province to check the authenticity of the materials.

Her painting on the 24 x 31 millimeter stamp was heralded for its creativity and for capturing the spirit and stateliness of the revolutionary leader.

Over almost 20 years, Lien has created dozens of highly acclaimed stamp sets and has won several awards including the first prize in the “A Vietnam Set of Stamps in the 20th Century” competition by the Vietnam Stamp Company.

One of her designs was recently chosen by the French post authority to be their national stamp.

“All the awards and titles are just ephemeral,” Lien said. “Titles are just like clothes; we can’t live without them but if they are too dazzling, the wearer will be consumed with self-conceit.”

Reported by Diem Thu