Escaping into a world of frills and lace

Xia Jiunn-na's (夏俊娜) ascent into the limelight is one of the most dramatic success stories in the contemporary Chinese art world. The 31-year-old's stunning rise to popularity surprised even herself. In 1995, she submitted an oil painting titled Autumn to the Annual Chinese Oil Painting Awards. It won her the second price and attracted the attention of art collectors. That same year, the painting fetched an unexpected 80,000 renminbis (US$9,680) at Christie's, four times greater than its estimated price. The work pushed her into the list of the 10 most sought-after Chinese oil painters.

Since then, Xia's works have been regulars at major auctions and become part of museum collections in China and abroad. Her works so enthralled the Chinese art world that she was praised by the Chinese media in the same breath as Xu Bei-hung (徐悲鴻), Li Shu-tung (李叔同) and other much older masters, and named one of the Chinese painters who best represents her times.

Xsia's trademark paintings of pensive fair-skinned young women wearing elaborate dresses and lounging inside splendid chambers has come to Taipei's Chin Der Jyu Gallery (沁德居). Consisting of 16 works from 1997 to 2002, A Classic New Visual Field ? Xia Jiunn-na's Art Show (古典新視野 ? 夏俊娜藝術展) offers a rare glimpse of this rising talent for viewers in Taiwan.

The first aspect of Xsia's work that is likely to intrigue viewers is the ostensibly European subject matter and technique, unusual for a Beijing-based Inner Mongolian who attribute her inspiration to daily life as a housewife. What saves Xia's works from being mere replicas of Renoir and Balthus, whose influenced Xia acknowledges, is her emphasis on atmosphere and the projection of her own character onto the canvas, which is a quintessentially Chinese concept.

Still, Xsia's subject matter does set her apart from her contemporaries in China whose works more often focus on society.

"The modernity of Xia's paintings does not lie in the desire to shock or to express bitterness but in providing a respite for people leading a busy life. People who are drawn to her paintings long for a world of tranquility and grandeur they cannot find in real life. One look at the young girl with a poodle will make them smile," said Lee Shu-fang (李淑芳), owner of Chin Der Jyu. "Beauty, pure and simple, still appeals to people these days."

Xia says her life and work remained unaffected by this sudden rise to fame, like the imperturbable world in her paintings. Xia's round-faced young women, their wavy dresses adorned with pearls and lace, seem to be eternally reading or enjoying afternoon tea. Xia's sunlight is always hazy and diffuses warmly through a window or garden shades. A lone woman, or sometimes one accompanied by a female friend, is always surrounded by wildly blooming flowers.

For Xia, who paints on fleeting intuition, these subjects express best her moods and thoughts. "Although I've also painted men and landscapes, I prefer painting women. I feel very close to them, as if I can confide in them my every passing thought," Xia told the Taipei Times. "Also, I just find girls and flowers beautiful. They are pleasing to the eye."

These subjects are also mysterious to Xia. She describes her painting process as being spurred on and controlled by a supernatural power to lay brush after brush on canvas until an ethereal background is born, at which point she is lead to reveal the people already hidden among the brush strokes. The world in which her subjects blissfully dwell, Xia said, is created by a will not of her own.