PULLMAN, Wash. – “A View from Sichuan,” paintings by Chinese artist Ji Ruoxiao, will be on display Feb. 25 through March 15 at the Compton Union Gallery. The artist will demonstrate her painting techniques at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Feb. 25 and attend an opening the same day at 4 p.m. in the gallery.
Ruoxiao has been described as representative of a new generation of women painters emerging in China. While trained in classical Chinese brush painting techniques, her work reflects a variety of influences from Chinese folk art to European impressionism.
One of the most exciting aspects of Ruoxiao’s work is “her constant experimentation with new techniques, imagery and stylistic sources,” says Jean Wetzel of the Department of Art at the University of Puget Sound. As a relatively young artist, Ruoxiao embodies the “desire for creative growth that is smoldering in many corners of artistic and intellectual Chinese society.”
Ruoxiao was born in Chongqing in the Sichuan province of the People’s Republic of China. She graduated from the Fine Art Department of Southwestern Normal University in Chongqing and, after five years of design work in an auto factory, did advanced study at the Central Institute of Fine Arts in Beijing, generally acknowledged as the finest art academy in China.
Since 1988 she has taught in the Art Department of Sichuan Normal University in Chengdu. Although she resides in the Seattle area, she returns to Sichuan to teach part of the year.
This is Ruoxiao’s second visit to WSU. In 1993 she spent several weeks in residence in the Department of Fine Arts and exhibited in Gallery III. Other venues for solo exhibitions have included the Kittredge Gallery of UPS, the Gallery of Goshen College (Indiana), the Provincial Exhibition Hall of Sichuan and the Museum of Chinese Art in Beijing. The latter exhibit was in conjunction with the International Women’s Conference held in Beijing in the summer of 1995.
Compton Union Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday.
