This document is an artist statement by Shalin Hai-Jew from December 2021 describing their latest body of work titled "Stain". It includes 54 pieces created using various mediums like alcohol inks, markers, paints and digital editing. The statement reflects on the creative process, techniques used, and themes of hardship but also hope during challenging times.

1. Stain
A beginner’s play in alcohol inks,
alcohol markers, acrylic paint,
watercolors, ancient red chop ink,
(non)synthetic papers,
light compositing,
and digital image editing…
Shalin Hai-Jew
Dec. 2021

2. 2
Elusive

3. 3
Little Tree

4. 4
Grift Sense

5. 5
Sun in Water

6. 6
Sun behind Grasses

7. 7
Outposts

8. 8
Rocky Bottom

9. 9
Time of No Horizon
(after Webb and Mann)

10. 10
Micro

11. Stain
• “Stain” is the latest slideshow in the alcohol ink drip playing series,
started a year ago next month. Here humanity goes through the fifth
wave (although this may differ based on geographical locale).
• I can’t wait for the new year, but I am unwilling to waste any of this
one, even as we count down.
11

12. Stain(cont.)
• We are, by most expert accounts, facing a hard winter. I can’t help
thinking we are doing this to each other since we have solutions in
hand.
• We all should be used to this by now, using common sense, going to ground,
lying low, returning to holding patterns, each of us to our own safe houses.
We are all in only relative spaces of safety. We know which tools are
efficacious, those that aren’t.
• We all have our own risk calculus, with varying degrees of false assumptions
in engaging the partially visible. But let’s not tell each other false stories of
false safety and false comfort though. These years will be a case study of
other- and self-deceptions at insane levels.
• We can do this and see each other out the other side. We don’t have to be
enervated; we don’t have to be destroyed.
12

13. Stain(cont.)
• I am very much enjoying the uses of paint brushes for different lines
and textures.
• Still, though, many of the alcohol ink paintings still need some work to be
visually palatable.
• Seeding images for digital image editing can be very simple but still look
somewhat refined after digital image editing.
13

14. Stain(cont.)
• So I hadn’t wanted to use more photos for the visuals, but I ended up
going on another photo shoot through my town…for more images of
trees and foliage. Some of the works using those photos may be seen
here. These involve light compositing.
• About digital image editing, it is true that you can almost control an
image down to the pixel level based on selections.
• That said, the global-level changes involve all sorts of trade-offs (like
everything else in life).
• Most of this is learning by example. This function does this to that image.
• I have learned “diffuse glow” can be used for vignetting.
14

15. On white multimedia
sketch paper
15

16. 16
Deconstructed Clouds

17. 17
A Share Each

18. 18
Blue Flowers

19. 19
Scribble Plants

20. On white synth paper
20

21. 21
Earth Scrabble

22. 22
Sweet Light

23. 23
Treading

24. 24
Mal

25. 25
Tracing Seam
(after Webb and Mann)

26. 26
Sun Rings

27. 27
Catalyst

28. On digital variants
28

29. 29
Dreaming Spring
in Hard Winter

30. 30
Solving for x

31. 31
Ozone

32. 32
Icy Reflection

33. 33
Scribble Plants
(ink outlines)

34. 34
White Tree,
Red Mountain

35. 35
Vertical Shards

36. 36
Bright Raining Sun

37. 37
Purple Rain

38. 38
Scratchy Sun

39. 39
Foraging

40. 40
Sunset

41. 41
Rising

42. 42
Primordial Water

43. 43
Drenching

44. 44
Last Leaf

45. 45
Uncut Gems

46. 46
Stylized Cocoon

47. 47
Seeping Dawn

48. 48
Roused Dirt

49. 49
Flushing Birds

50. 50
River Edge

51. 51
Drying Stalks

52. 52
Cold Heat

53. 53
Other Side of
Fence

54. 54
Tree Afire