After moving to the U.S. in 2001, Xi Qiang has continued to work as an artist, and now lives in New Jersey. Although he puts strong emphasis on details and lifelikeness, he is also a quick and productive painter.
Qian’s life-size painting of an old lady sewing a flag was created in Los Angeles, but he obtained his original inspiration in Manhattan at a show held by Falun Gong practitioners. On the street, there was a huge flag with a multicolored Falun (or “law-wheel” in Chinese). Falun Gong is a meditation practice with truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance as its principles.
“It gave me a sense of brightness,” said the painter of the flag. “ And it inspired me to paint a picture of the making of the flag. I wanted to share with the viewers the creation of this brightness, and I wanted to bring the painting to shine.”
The elderly lady in the painting, who was almost 80 years old at the time Qian portrayed her, was also the actual flagmaker. The flag itself took several weeks to produce, with several people working on different parts of it; the lady from the painting herself spent about three weeks working on it.
Xi Qiang himself also participated in the production of the flag to compose the painting. He spent one month to find the right composition, and two and a half months more to paint it.
The warm color harmony gives the painting its coziness, while the artist makes use of two light sources: From inside, the lamplight gives the old lady’s face its warmth, and from outside, natural daylight adds some cooler reflections on the flag. The pleats of the satin fabric reflect in the two different kinds of light, making the colors more lively.
Qiang concluded, “As the competition is about going back to tradition, I hope we can send a message of true compassion and beauty through the artworks to the viewers.”
Many visitors to the exhibition were touched by the lifelikness of the old lady in the painting and the warm-hearted dedication on her face.
Martha Flores-Vesquez, a community district leader from Flushing said the lady reminded her of her own mother, a hard-working woman who worked as a factory worker.
She added, “That reminds me of my own culture. My father came here from Puerto Rico as a math professor, and because he couldn’t speak English, he became a factory worker here.”
She was impressed by the themes the Chinese artists dealt with. “It’s an exhibition of the past and the present, and things that need to change.”
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