Wander • Play • or Game ?

　　Seah Shin Wong (Singapore)

　　Wan Xiaojia's new art album "Wander · Play"(also known as Journey to Dreamland) will be published soon. She sent me an e-mail asking me to write something for it, "The article can be of any length, as long as it is from your heart."

　　"Wander · Play" is her latest endeavour since the exhibition and publication of the oil painting "Solitude · Dance" (also known as "Flowers in the Wind")in May 2010. I feel as if one of my family members present me an academic report, knowing that even though I am unqualified to comment, I still need to mumble something to express my feeling.

　　When my daughter, who used to work in an art gallery, died in March 2005, I sank into a depression. Eventually, I managed to cheer up and it was when I was engaged with Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts that I got to know Xiaoiia, a very talented young lady. She studied under the supervision of Guo Runwen, a famous oil painter, and took Frida Kahlo, a legendary contemporary Mexican artist as the subject of her MA thesis.

　　Not Adhering to Post-Modernism

　　At that time, post-modernism prevailed Chinese artistic circle. Many young artists scrambled to "stir up a revolution" and eventually "found a niche for themselves". This phenomenon shocked and puzzled me, despite I had been engaged in artistic circle and business for so many years. As I shuttled between Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Chongqing and Guangzhou, I made contact and became acquainted with some young friends in the art community. One of them was Wan Xiaojia.

　　She comes from Chengdu, Sichuan Province and her parents are both artists. She majored in Chinese painting in her undergraduate studies, and studied oil painting as a graduate student at Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. She is totally devoted to studying, thinking and painting.

　　During our meetings and conversations, I found her to be very different from the leading figures and followers of the art world at that time: she is brilliantly talented, but does not follow the crowd; she has unique insights, but does not seek sensationalism; she has a strong personality, but does not lack in earnestness. For these reasons, we started our collaboration in June 2007.

　　In the course of three years, Xiao Jia has created 26 character oil paintings. Together with her first painting album, thet were exhibited in Singapore ap in May 2010. In Xiaojia's these paintings represent the process in which "what you getsee is what you see and what you express is what you paintget". The characters in her painting not only tell their own stories, but also contain the trials and tribulations Xiaojia has suffered in her artistic creation.

　　Upholding the Purity of Art

　　The present collection is "live narrative" of Xiaojia's artistic journey over the past two years. The collection is a departure from her previous one in terms of the depiction of her objects and the technique of expression. However, as a close observer, I can see some common threads in all her works, and these are the maverick in the artist, her diligence, her unique spiritual world, her painstaking expressions of her intentions and her dedication to the creative process and artistic language.

　　She does not crave for public recognition nor count her personal gains and losses, because fame and fortune "are perhaps the best weapon to kill an artist." She lets the stream of creation flow freely along with her emotions, such that each character, plant, animal and the life of the common people become artistic objects that are used as an expression of life, while she relentlessly "pursues the pure and ultimate expressions of art."

　　Therefore, she advocates solitude, and stays vigilant to her conviction by constantly questioning herself "Am I still myself?" As "the creation of art is usually done in private, is very personal, and is sustained by the self-contained world of the artist's psyche", the aim of being alone is to "put myself in a prolonged state of facing my deepest, inner self." She said, "Only when I am at ease with being alone that I can uphold the purity of art."

　　Xiaojia believes that to elevate art to a spiritual height, "the spiritual form will have to dictate the artistic form and the presentation of the artistic imagery". It is no surprise, then, that for her, creating a good painting is extremely difficult, "because lying at the core of a painting is a spiritual world", that "the brush obeys my heart" to realize purified vision of the artist's inner world.

　　Treasuring the Process of Creation

　　The difficulties also arise from artist's attention to and exploration of the painting process, the presentation techniques and real life experiences, which seems more poignant. The reason why the process is more attractive stems from the fact that "it literally grows along with me", and that "the world in my painting becomes closer to my own", like "a refraction and record of the trajectory of my psychological activities". Regarding her techniques of expression, she feels that creation often has to contend with the contradiction between spiritual discovery and the language of art. Life experiences, right down to "the minutiae of any points of my life, may be sufficient to touch off sparks of inspiration."

　　It is precisely due to her in-depth understanding and unique interpretation of the complexities of the spiritual world, the creative process, artistic language and life, and her diligence in tending to her spiritual garden like a hard-working gardener, or as a honey bee busily collecting pollen to brew her "signature honey of a hundred schools", that what Xiaojia has created, after going through the process from start to the final product, can be considered to be highly sophisticated. Encapsulated in these works are "love and other emotions in life, the rhythm of music, the abstract forms of dance, and the joy of playing."

　　Thus, Xiaojia's paintings do not give the audience a sense of stuffiness, rigidity, coldness nor a world devoid of life. They are more like "what you see is more than what you get", or the building blocks of a spiritual realm, where the landscapes depict the soul that pulses with feelings, rhythm, abstract elements and fun. What she has created is in line with what Confucius meant when he said "to dabble in the Arts", and yet are never simplistic, low-level nor careless "playing". The premise to "dabbling in the Arts" is "to set one's sight on The Way". Xiao Jia's real experience and deep understanding of the Way of the Arts and life itself are reflected in the hard work that she pours into her creation. How then, can we not stand amazed and embrace these intriguing "spiritual babies" that are presented before our eyes today!

　　After I have finished writing these words, I re-read the e-mail that Xiaojia sent me; apparently she had decided to ask me to write this foreword "after much deliberation". As for me, I had to mull over her invitation for a while before I set forth to fulfill what she has entrusted me with. Yet one thing is common between us: everything had come "from the bottom of our hearts"!