New Paintings of China

When I think about China, I am tenderly drawn to traditional images of well-known Chinese clichés. In fact, when I visited China, I was struck by how well the Chinese people had supplanted their homeland culture in other parts of the world. I mean the typical Chinese restaurant with its dark woody front and red lanterns isn’t much different in New York or in Hangzhou.

Those typically ‘Chinese’ images that we are so familiar with in the West are deeply rooted in the Chinese tradition. When I look at my photographs of China, I think many of the scenes could easily have been taken outside of China. This is an uneasy feeling because I don’t like the idea that I went to China just to verify the clichés about the country and that I didn’t discover the ‘real’ China that was hidden from my eyes.

I’m sure this isn’t the case. So now I am looking closer at my photographs in order to find signs of a ‘real’ and ‘unknown’ China. I can remember in particular a short walk that I took in the morning into a nearby district from my hotel. I can still smell the frying food coming from the street shops that had no doors into which I could see the people bustling in the back. There was vibrancy in the busy-ness of the street not unlike Canal Street in New York. But the sounds and smells were quite different.

It’s impossible to capture this in a painting but I will try. More importantly, I will attempt to render something of the spirit of the place and not allow myself to simply replicate that well-known cliché that exists with China.