The lacquer carving, “One Hundred Elephants,” by Vu Ha Nam. Lacquer carving allows the artist to go into far greater detail than lacquer painting.

From afar, artist Vu Ha Nam’s works look like regular lacquer paintings. But Nam actually uses the age-old traditional technique of lacquer carving, an all but forgotten art in today’s modern world.

To start, Nam covers a wooden board with a canvas. Then he adds layer after layer of smooth lacquer paint. The process can take days or even weeks, depending on the size of the work, as he needs 15-20 layers of lacquer and his paintings are often over a square meter large. Each coat of lacquer is at least five millimeters thick.

Once the layers are dry, Nam then carves intricate pictures into the lacquer. This is the technique that separates his art from regular lacquer work, as carving allows Nam to illustrate the small details that lacquer painters leave out.

Lacquer is usually used to portray simple subjects or portraits, but Nam’s carvings depict large-scale scenes, huge panoramas and landscapes, in which even the individual leaves on a distant tree are carved. After carving, Nam colors his work with regular paints.

It often takes two or three years to complete a single piece of a lacquer carving. But the paintings rarely sell and when they do, they don’t fetch very high prices. It’s his simple love for the obscure art that keeps Nam going.

Today, the art of lacquer carving has fallen into near-oblivion. Whereas it used to be taught at Vietnam’s finest art schools, no young artists study the traditional form any more. Nam is now the only lacquer carver in all of Ho Chi Minh City, the country’s largest metropolis.

Buddhism and nature

Nam said his most famous work Tram voi (One hundred elephants), was an ode to the dense forests and big-leaf trees of the Central Highlands, which he said once provided a kind of paradise on earth for Vietnam’s herds of wild elephants.

The artist, born in 1962 in Hanoi, describes the carving, which features a herd of 100 elephants at a river crossing between the jungle and open fields, as almost environmentalist in nature.

“The picture causes viewers to think about a forest, a patch of land or a natural world that has partly disappeared,” he said. “The elephants’ habitat remains only in people’s minds and has become a sad memory.

“I hope we’ll one day see huge herds of elephants at peace with nature in the Central Highlands again,” he said.

In May, the picture was displayed at the Buddhism Fine Arts Exhibition at Pho Quang Pagoda in HCMC’s Tan Binh District.

At first glance, the painting doesn’t appear to be related to Buddhism, but Nam said it was indeed a very Buddhist work.

Elephants are a common image in Buddhist sutras, he said.

Prince Siddhartha, who became the first Buddha and founder of the religion, was born after his mother had a dream in which a white six-tusk elephant ascended from the sky and penetrated her belly.

Later in life, after Siddhartha had achieved enlightenment, his compassion and power disarmed an elephant that had been sent to kill him. Rather than attack the Buddha, the assassin kneeled down before the former prince, known then as Lord Shakyamuni Buddha.

Buddhists often refer to the Buddha as the “Elephant King” or “Great Elephant King” as an honorific title. Late scholar Doan Trung Con, who wrote The Dictionary of Buddhism, said that the title was a practical one. A king elephant, wrote Con, is the strongest and smartest in an elephant herd and acts as the group’s leader. Buddha and bodhisattvas thus were addressed as “Elephant Kings” as they guide the human race in its quest for peace of mind.

“Elephants are not only an artistic image but one of spirituality and culture,” said Nam, who has spent much of his career depicting Buddhist imagery.

Now he’s busy carving a portrait of Hanoi, focusing mainly on the capital’s centuries-old craft streets.

Reported by Giao Huong