“Paintings are shadows deep inside ourselves, nowhere to hide and always present.” Her pursuit of painting began with a surge of life. Qin Zong-hui began her painting career when she was 33. Her focus is on the movements of natural energies and the liberation of inner strength. Her works explore consciousness and self-reflection, with points, lines, planes, colors, and structures in a painting coming from the heart, and she deconstructs concrete colors to build her abstract vocabulary. Her generous use of abstract blue elements suggest appearances of the sea and forms of mountains at the same time. By seeing with her eyes and feeling with her body, she captures both in her own spirituality with her painting, where the existence of the self and nature become one. Self-reflections are constantly changing, and Qin Zong-hui’s paintings are like a quest for clarity.
“I make bamboo carving because I drink tea; I love bamboos because I make bamboo carving; and I plant bamboos because I love bamboos.” Spending more than thirty years in the arts of tea and bamboo carving, Weng Ming-chuan combines his love for tea and bamboos with both classical and modern aesthetics to convey restrained richness and versatile humor with simple, humble designs and symbols. He brought his unique aesthetics and the striking imagery of a “leader” into the bamboo carving tea ware for tea ceremonies, especially the tea measure. His popular, magnificent series “Qin Bricks and Han Tiles” and “Moon and Breeze” further established a bright future for bamboo carving. In this fall’s solo exhibition at Wistaria Tea House, in addition to some of the artist’s signature works from the past, we also feature his latest works, in which he challenged himself with the contrast of the two materials of silver and bamboo. |