Heavy colour on silk

42 x 88 cm.16 1/2 x 34 5/8 in.

Signed and dated in Chinese；stamped with the artist’s seal on the lower left
LITERATURE My Humble House Art Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan, Yuan Jai, 2011, p.146-147.
Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, A Visionary Mind: The Art of Yuan Jai in a Quarter Century, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 2012.

EXHIBITED Taipei, HongKong, ShenZhen, China, Hanart TZ Gallery, He Xiangning Art Museum, Exhibition of Modern Green and-Blue Landscape Painting by Yuan Jai, 2000.
Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, A VisionaryMiind: The Art of Yuan Jai in a Quarter Century, Mar 24-June24. 2012.

“The achievement of Yuan Jai paintings is divided by 1990. She also mentioned that “Before 1990s, I have stopped painting for nearly 20 years and most of my paintings showed the image of the teacher’s painting style. However, I have not given up on practicing calligraphy and I started creations again after my styles has surpassed the pure imitation period of predecessors’ works.” Yuan Jai was profoundly affected by Chinese painting artist when she was studying at the National Taiwan Normal University. Under the guidance of Chinese painting master, Fu Xinshe and Huang Junbi, she has built up solid and robust foundation for ink painting. Upon graduation, she pursued advanced study in Europe and took internship. During the period, she broadened her horizon in Western culture and art. Later her work experience at the National Palace Museum provided extensive reading into the essence of Chinese arts in the past and now. These disciplines helped her grasp the linear characteristics of Chinese painting while the cumulative art momentum and creative concepts of “seeking differentiation, innovation and variance” over the long run allowed Yuan Jai to access Chinese painting using contemporary stance after she started painting again.
Yuan Jai’s liberation of own imagination and aspiration presents a rich content of visual implications. Apart from formality of innovation, she even proposes more possibility of Chinese painting in terms of material and colors. Excerpt taken from the prelude for solo exhibition for Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts “Fantasy now and then: Yuan Jai’s 25 years of creation.”
Flower and Birds is a signature work of Yuan Jai in the attempt to shift to surrealism in 2000. The image includes classic flowers, birds, mountain rocks, and shells as well other elements confined in a unclear time and space of fantasy. The lake rock on the left stands out to support the layout of the entire screen while the stylish and colorful objects scatter in space. Yuan Jai changed her habit of using gold color for mountain and water by attempting the dark brown and brown-yellow interlaced bottom rarely seen in Chinese painting with horizontal lines stacking to denote the conceptualized waves of sand hills, detaching the viewers from reality and placing themselves in nameless other dimension. The personalized shape of a female’s face from the lake rock, the sand ground background, articles abstracted from different time and space, and the strong shadow contrast suggest the artist’s resonance of Dali’s paintings in the 1930S and the worship for surrealism. Nonetheless Yuan Jai does not choose to imitate and different from the mystery and terrified emotions from Dali’s arts, Yuan Jai only takes the symbolism from surrealism and consolidates the classic admiration and past memory in front of the viewers. The classic objects with artistic shape and outlines show the exquisite craft and techniques as well as the foundation in Chinese painting to denote an overall bright and graceful color. The smooth and fine lines thoroughly break the formality of composition for classic painting and the concepts of time and space, providing viewers with strong visual shock. She applies the purest and open art to re-dismantle Chinese and western arts while building her own stage using the glamourous views and majestic imagination of surrealism. She blends Western and oriental elements in allocation for “Flowers and Birds,” introducing the strong thinking of colors in Western oil painting into Chinese painting while taking the elements of Chinese classic birds and flower patterns and colored porcelain into western background. She re-blended the painting into her personal aesthetics system. The viewing of Yuan Jai’s creation seems to denote the carefree and relaxed pace of artists, which progresses from knot of tradition to liberate herself in the new world of vastness and infinity. At the same time, she has written a splendid new page for contemporary ink painting.

Price estimate:
HKD：160,000 - 220,000
USD：20,600 - 28,400

Auction Result:
HKD: 184,000