Born in post-civil war China, Wai-Sin Tong-Darbonne endured a tough and lonely childhood, immersing herself in art.
By Michaela K. Apruzzese
Sitting down to dinner at the home of Malibu resident artist Wai-Sin Tong-Darbonne and her husband, Allen Darbonne, is an artistic experience. The arrangement of vegetables in the soup looks as if they were created with the Chinese watercolors Wai-Sin (who goes by her first name for her art) uses in her paintings.
“I call this vegetable ‘Spring Rain,'” Wai-Sin said, picking up a clear, stringy vegetable. “Chinese herbs and vegetables are from nature and healing.”
Wai-Sin’s love for nature is portrayed in nearly all of her paintings and is what she said helped her through her upbringing during post-civil war China. Her paintings of landscapes, animals, floral-vegetation, birds, women and calligraphy emit what her friend Freda Goree calls, “An essence of peace.” A statement that is in stark contrast to Wai-Sin’s childhood.
Born in Guangdong, China in 1952, Wai-Sin’s family was victim of the turmoil that enveloped China. While the large battles were over, armies of warlords were still raiding villages trying to gain position and possessions.
When Wai-Sin was still an infant her family fled one of the raids, and her mother left Wai-Sin by the side of the road, hoping someone would pick her up. Wai-Sin’s mother returned more than a day later to find her daughter still near the road, alive.
The family soon moved to Hong Kong, but could not afford to feed all their children so they gave up Wai-Sin for adoption to a childless couple who were relatives.
“My foster mother was rich before the civil war and had servants,” Wai-Sin said. “She used me to do work not meant for a child.”
Her mother would not allow toilets in the house, so her adoptive family used public toilets. But her mother refused to go to the public toilet, so she made Wai-sin carry the “port” back and forth, one mile each way, into town every night through bad areas where local adult men harassed her. She was also made to clean out the “creek,” which was actually a town sewer that ran past their home, on a regular basis.
Wai-Sin was forbidden to have friends or go to after-school functions. Her siblings were sworn to secrecy about the adoption so she went through school thinking they were classmates.
Wai-Sin started drawing out of loneliness.
“I had no one to talk to, so I would draw my cat.”
Her parents forbade her to draw, so Wai-Sin would sketch at night by the light of a flashlight.
Turning 18 was significant for Wai-Sin. She received top honors from the matriculation exams in fine arts, which qualified her for the Fine Arts University, but her parents only allowed her to study a subject in which she could earn money, so Wai-Sin chose teaching.
“At least I could be close to art,” she said.
She put herself through college by tutoring and loans from the government.
Also that year, Wai-Sin’ life changed in a pivotal way. She discovered her aunt and uncle were really her biological parents. But because of a variety of circumstances, Wai-Sin felt she could not share with her family her discovery. She kept quiet about the adoption and immersed herself in art.
“I had to hold everything inside, so I expressed myself through art,” Wai-Sin said.
In adulthood, her adoption was revealed and Wai-Sin could finally face her biological parents, knowing the truth. Looking back, Wai-Sin said she has a forgiving view of her situation.
“I never resented my foster parents,” she said. “I knew my foster parents did not know better. And my real parents made the only choice they knew how to make.”
(Wai-Sin, today, contributes financially to care for her adoptive mother, who is in a nursing home in China. Her real mother is alive and well in China.)
It was this forgiving attitude that drove Wai-Sin to pursue her dream of being an artist. She studied with masters in China-animals under Tong Wen in Shanghai and landscapes with Lung Zhi-Dot in Hong Kong- and received numerous awards in Hong Kong exhibitions. In 1996, Wai-Sin opened her private studio, Wen Shun Tong (Floating Cloud Studio), and her work was exhibited and sold in Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, Japan and China.
In 2000, three years after Hong Kong reverted back to China rule, Wai-Sin decided to move to the United States. Soon after arriving in Los Angeles, she met psychologist Dr. Allen Darbonne of Malibu, whom she married in 2001. Darbonne was attracted to his wife immediately because, he said, “I could sense how she came from love. Physically she was beautiful, and yet the radiance of her beauty for me was her heart.”
After acclimating to her new life, Wai-Sin started selling her work in the U.S. On exhibit at the John Landon Gallery in Morro Bay since December, Wai-Sin is looking to exhibit in Southern California this year. Within 18 months, she has sold 20 paintings privately, several of those to Kathy and Gary Bang of the San Francisco Bay area.
“There is an ethereal feel to Wai-Sin’s art, and Gary and I connected to it on a spiritual level,” said Kathy Bang, a past board member of the Joffrey Ballet.
The Bangs were so enamored with one of Wai-Sin’s paintings, “Caress”-a painting of the moonlight caressing a sailboat on the ocean-that they hung it so it is the first thing they see when they walk in their door. Kathy Bang, also a photographer, has even taken photos of the detailed pieces within the painting.
In order to achieve that detail and expression of color deep within the painting, Wai-Sin has developed a technique in which she paints on both sides of specially ordered rice paper from China, while it’s still wet. The depth of the watercolor due to this technique has caused people to think the paintings are oils.
Dr. Stephan Sideroff, clinical director of Moonview Treatment Center in Santa Monica, was also impressed with Wai-Sin’s art and commissioned her to paint an Asian landscape for his office, which he said, is, “A very calm and peaceful painting. The meditative landscape takes you in.”
Now living within the canyons of Malibu, Wai-Sin surrounds herself and her studio with nature and quiet.
“Nature has been important to me because it taught me love, and resilience,” Wai-Sin said. “I did not have a feeling of love from my mother; I saw it from the ocean. The waves so gentle like a mother’s hand touching the hair of the daughter. I draw pictures of the beauty of this world and I have to say thank you to God for that.”