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Winter Lotus at Old Summer Palace

Winter Lotus at Old Summer Palace

Liu Liping (5)

Liu Liping (section2)

Winter Lotus at Old Summer Palace ( 2002) by Liu Liping

Oil on canvas, 50cm x 60cm

Collector: Sallie Beaumont

I met Liu Liping in the mid-nineties in Beijing. She was teaching in the Printmaking Department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts where she still teaches as a professor and supervisor of doctoral students. We immediately hit it off. She was funny and vibrant and very down to earth. I became a big fan of her art. Although she teaches silkscreen and woodblock printing she is a highly skilled painter and is really interested in the natural world. Her paintings are influenced by her printing technique where every element seems almost carved into the canvas. Close up the paintings appear slightly blurred (see above sectional) as if looking through the wrong end of a lens but stepping back the subject explodes into a sharp, clear image. Liu Liping describes her technique as “creating a seemingly virtual world from close-up, but a real one from a distance.”

In 1997 I organised an exhibition of ink and oil paintings in Beijing and invited Liu Liping to take part. All her work sold as did all her work at an exhibition I curated three years later in Sydney at the Mosman Art Gallery. I regretted I hadn’t collected one of her works. In 2002 on a trip back to China I went to visit her and unexpectedly and generously she presented me with this painting as a gift. I love this painting and it has been on our walls ever since. I recently asked Liu Liping about the original inspiration for her winter lotus works and this is what she said:

“It was the winter of 1990 and I went to Yuanmingyuan to see my classmate. After visiting his studio I came back to the road. That day was just after snow had fallen and the sun was setting. I was riding my bike and I suddenly looked at a pond I was passing. The lotus caught my attention. Because it was winter all that was left was the lotus stalk. The light on the pond was golden yellow as the sun set. The snow covered both the lotus stalks and the surface of the ice and it looked spectacular from a distance. I took a picture with my camera, and later I showed it to my best friend, and I said that I had been looking at a winter lotus stalk in the sunset half covered by snow and it was so beautiful. My friend said, ‘Actually, there are a lot of people who paint this subject in Chinese paintings, but there are not many people who paint it in oil.’ I hadn't done any Chinese paintings at the time, but I was quite keen on oil paintings, so I gave it a go and painted one.”

Liu Liping found a subject that inspired her and has continued to create more variations of frozen lotuses in oil of which my painting is a good example. I find this work so beautiful and soothing. It immediately takes me back to those crisp, wintry Beijing afternoons in the fading light of day.

Sallie Beaumont

(Sallie Beaumont lived, studied and worked in China from 1988-1998 which gave her the perfect opportunity to witness and engage with the burgeoning contemporary art scene.)

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