Vo Trinh Bien (R) paints in his Da Lat café

A Highland artist is known far and wide for his paintings and the unique method he uses to create them.

Bien is the only known artist in Vietnam who puts oil to paper with his finger.

He has never received professional training; it’s his passion and hard work that have given him a flair for art.

In the past five years, the resident of Da Lat in the Central Highlands has created nearly 1,000 finger paintings that have made their way to all corners of the country and around the world.

His work gets high praise from the critics, and from the tourists who express their opinion by quickly scooping up his paintings.

Bien’s small café at 70 Truong Cong Dinh Street is often packed with art lovers and tourists, especially foreigners, who come to sip good coffee and look at his artwork.

“I’m a painter myself and have traveled widely but I’ve never seen an artist who does oil on canvas with his forefinger like Bien. This is just amazing,” said Dominique Ficht, a Swiss tourist who was given a painting by Bien.

“One day, when I was teaching some 10 years ago, I erased the words in brush pen on the board with my hand and was amazed by the beautiful smear it created,” said Bien, who is now 44 years old.

“The idea of using my forefinger to paint flashed through my mind.”

Painting with a finger is not easy. The finger is pressed on the canvas and this determines what sort of stroke is created.

Bien sees fascinating differences between painting with a brush and with a finger.

For instance, he has to clean his hand with paraffin every hour to remove the harmful oil.

More importantly, “I can inject strong feelings into my work by painting with my finger. It’s as though the feelings come straight from my blood,” Bien said.

Then there’s the authenticity angle. “My fingerprints are imprinted on the paintings, distinguishing mine from others,” he said.

It’s also an advantage that he has no need for an easel and so can paint anywhere, and his method saves time as some work only takes one or two minutes to finish.

Bien likes to retreat and paint whenever he can, like when there are few customers in his coffee shop. In the late evening he also thinks about what he would like to paint. “I’m often overwhelmed with feelings at night time,” he says.

At first, Bien painted to relieve his homesickness for his native Quang Nam and the feelings of nostalgia that drenched him.

Quang Nam is full of bamboo so it’s no wonder that the sturdy plant is one of Bien’s favorite subjects.

He values his paintings according to the amount of effort he puts into them. Simplicity, nostalgia and compassion run in equal measure through his work.

His love affair with painting began at an early age. He didn’t have money to buy ink or paper so he painted on old calendar sheets and made ink from used batteries.

Bien left Quang Nam in the early 1990s to study literature at Da Lat University.

He dropped out after two years and did all kinds of menial jobs like mowing the lawns of private homes, planting vegetables, and being a waiter at the more expensive hotels in Da Lat and Hanoi.

In 2000, after years of working, he had enough money and experience to return to Da Lat and open his Art Café to support his family and fulfill his artistic aspirations.

He soon began painting in a shed behind the café, using a brush at first then experimenting with his finger.

It took a lot of practice and it was only after two years of experimenting that he felt sure of his finger technique.

Still, he didn’t expect his unique paintings to be well received by the public. He was wrong, however.

In his work, Bien likes to tell tales of samsara (the endless cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth) and reflect on human fate, love and life, but he likes many other subjects too.

They indicate existence and non-existence and depict successful people as well as tormented souls and those myriad others who find life too hard.

His pictures are scooped up by Japanese and Chinese tourists as well as Buddhist monasteries here and abroad.

Since 2006, Bien has staged 10 exhibitions, including in Hong Kong and Australia.

In his most recent show, Loi ve (Return path), which was held last month, more than 30 of the 43 paintings were snapped up by Buddhist monks and foreigners on opening day.

His greatest desire is to display his work at Hanoi’s famous Temple of Literature, known as Van Mieu in Vietnamese, and thereby make a long-cherished dream come true.

For now, he is preparing for a month-long exhibition of his work in Melbourne, Australia in October.

Called Mat na (Masks), the exhibition will feature 20 recent oil paintings that depict the changing moods of a person in a day. He will also demonstrate his finger-painting skills as part of the show.

Reported by Nhat Hung - Gia Binh