Nguyen Than’s paintings are ‘love songs’ that come together in an art in which ‘the past, the present and the future mingle together’.

Memories of his grandmother’s village in the North mingle with the sadness of growing up in the South during the war, the hardships of supporting his family as a cyclo-rider when he was banned from painting.

The villages, mountains, rivers, oxen, birds, women in their countryside dress, represent the fading memories of his childhood; wandering horses, fish, the sea - dead heroes and those ‘who have absurdly died on the sea’; nude women stare into nothingness (the past war), whilst arrows and dots point the way to his journey into the future.

Than is a natural expressionist, his work highly personal, intense, emotional – rich colours overflowing, compositions immediately attractive. Even his largely monochromatic nudes, described very naturally and enhanced with a mere hint of violet or ochre, literally overflow his canvas.