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.
