Chinese Temples of Hong Kong

After the success of his first book ‘My Hong Kong’, which contained pastoral landscapes and coastal scenes of Hong Kong, Mark Talbot Roberts pays tribute to the traditional religious beliefs of the many Chinese people, who inhabit his adopted home. In this new book, which comprised a three-year project, the artist has painted more than ninety Chinese temples, each of which portrays its own unique history and culture. With his signature layered washes and varied tonal values, Mark’s watercolours of Chinese temples provides a Western view of a traditional Chinese subject. While some temples are large and very well decorated, others (and especially shrines) are, by contrast, small and unassuming. The larger and more ornate temples, some of which are relatively newly built, reflect the thriving community in which they tend to be located whilst the smaller temples and shrines offer a glimpse of people’s past lives and their traditional beliefs and values.

About the artist

Mark Talbot Roberts was born in 1950 in Cambridge, England and moved to Hong Kong in 1977 to pursue a legal career. Mark has been a professional artist since 2004 when he retired from the law. He has held seven one man exhibitions in Hong Kong and one exhibition in London. He has also held ten exhibitions in Hong Kong with Artists Abroad. He paints predominately in watercolour, which he believes best conveys the wide range of subject matter that can be found in Hong Kong. In 2013 he published a book of his paintings entitled “My Hong Kong”, which portrayed a wide range of images of his adopted home. This current and second book is dedicated to Chinese temples in Hong Kong. There are more than six hundred temples throughout Hong Kong and whilst it would be almost impossible to paint all of them, this book contains paintings of those temples, which have captured the artist’s imagination. These temples and shrines vary enormously with some being relatively simple structures whilst others are incredibly ornate and richly decorated.