If your taste in art is for beautiful Chinese ladies in traditional dress, dreaming by a rocky pool, then you would have been spoiled if you had visited Qin Bailan’s exquisite painting exhibition recently [Dec 1-2, School of Engineering, University of Auckland. The exhibtion was sponsored by the Confucius Institute, Auckland, and NZCFS Auckland branch] .
Each painting is carefully crafted with great attention paid to detail to make sure that they are historically accurate in style and traditional dress. Her paintings are rendered in the realistic style or a fresh freehand style. She also enjoys doing freehand water/ink figure paintings. Whilst I was there, she would suddenly choose a visitor to the exhibition and ask them to sit for her whilst she quickly did an ink sketch of them. People crowded around and jostled to be drawn too, which she happily took in good part.
Qin Bailan became interested in art during her childhood and, at the young age of 18, fell sick, becoming paralysed and since then is confined to a wheelchair. In the forty years since her illness she has created thousands of paintings mainly of women and children and has travelled to more than 50 countries, including Russia, United States, Germany, France and many more. She is also a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and of the Chinese Artists Association as well as being Vice Chairperson of Liaoning Railway Cultural Union. She has been a representative of the United Nations World Conference on Women and was one of ten people awarded the title of “China’s Ten Major Art Masters”.
Qin Bailan is well-known in her native Jinzhou, Liaoning Province and she toured in New Zealand for two weeks in December, 2012, starting in Auckland, and travelling to Wellington and Christchurch.
Click HERE for Qin Bailan’s website
Teri France, December, 2012
