Cherishing my Mother ~by Hsiao Chen-Hsiun, Hsiao Chen-Chia
Looking back at her life as an artist devoted to gouache painting. It is truly remarkable for her to succeed as she did, in a society tat undervalued women and their talents. While she was in high school, her talents were first discovered by a Japanese teacher, Gobara Koto. With encouragement from her teachers and her father, she traveled by herself to Japan for study. Her hard work and fierce determination did not disappoint her elders, and her works were selected for nine times at the Imperial Art Exhibition and the Ministry of Education Art Exhibition. Being selected for these exhibitions was a high honor for any Japanese artist, not to mention one from Taiwan. After the end of Japanese rule in Taiwan, she returned to Taiwan and continued to devote herself to gouache painting. When painters who came to Taiwan from China sparked off a controversy over whether “traditional Chinese painting” should mean gouache painting or ink painting, the gouache division of the Taiwan Provincial Art Exhibition was suspended for ten years. Even so, my mother did not change her coourse and turn to Chinese ink painting. Instead, she stuck to her own principles and ideals of artistic creation.
Gouache painting is complicated and requires numerous steps. It is an extension of the ancient technique of the resplendent Tang Dynasty academic painting. Natural minerals such as jade and gold are ground into powder and mixed with animal-based glue, and then applied to a silk ground. The materials are difficult to procure, extremely expensive, and require a great deal of patience and attention to detail. It is very difficult to make any changes once you started, so a sketch has to be made before applying the mineral pigment. That is why the colors, mood, and meticulousness surpass that found in most oil paintings. When my mother was painting, she would not allow others to watch her.
My mother did not create a lot of works, and her subjects were things in her everyday environment, but every piece was painstakingly created. She sometimes changed a painting over and over. It could take a year before she was satisfied with it. She said “I don’t compare myself with others. I only compare my own works to see if I can have an artistic breakthrough and use fewer lines to create an even more beautiful painting.” I remember when my mother had heart trouble in her old age, I would still see her in the middle of the night and find her painting. Seeing her devotion to her art, I couldn’t bring myself to make her go back to bed. Even to this day I feel a mixture of guilt and nostalgia when I think of those moments.
In 1997 my mother was granted the Cultural Award by the Executive Yuan. She added the prize money to her savings and used the savings to create a scholarship for later generations of artists, in the hope that they would carry on the gouache tradition and take it to an even higher and more glorious level.
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Photo with Mr. Hsiao Chen-Chia
(Mrs. Chen Chin's son) | |
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Photo with Mr. Hsiao Chen-Hsiun
(Mrs. Chen Chin's son) | |
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Photo with Mrs. Chen Chin's daughter in law |
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