ILLUSTRATED:

Paintings by Xia Junna, Chin Der Jyu Gallery, Taipei, 2002, color illustrated, p. 44

This painting is to be sold with a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist.

Xia Junna: Star Born for the Art Fledgling be widespread concerned

Xia Junna, born in Inner Mongolia in 1971, graduated from Affiliated High School of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in 1991, and graduated from CAFA in 1995. When Xia Junna studied in CAFA, some of her drawings and oil paintings were already away from the extent of modeling practice flavor in classroom, the strong lines and shading performed an unusually plastic strength and strange life style. From these drawings and oil paintings people not only just see skills, but also flinty and firm experience of life, and a kind of life crisis. Her painting in 1993, "Bird" series was added a surreal terrorist color. If there was no one suggested to you deliberately, the viewer will never think that these works was created by a pupillary girl, who is felt too simple to have any momentous experiences in life.

Xia Junna's artistic idiosyncracy is a constantly evoked process. When she studied in Affiliated High School of CAFA, she was once a laggard student. At that time, Shen Ling was graduated from CAFA and was assigned to teach in Affiliated High School. She discovered Xia and enlightened her, Thus Xia made progress rapidly on her professional study and she was enrolled into studio 4 of Oil Painting Dept. of CAFA smoothly. Under the guidance of teachers, Ge Pengren and Wang Yuping, Xia began her personal style exploration progress. Of course, same as other contemporary artists, Western modernism concepts also has important infection on Xia, such as quiet of Picasso blue period, noble temperament of people from Renoir's painting, Balthus's specific quality under modeling, sacred religious atmosphere of Francesca, etc. During this process, Xia had no intention of imitation, Xia Junna: Star Born for the Art but opened up her own path based on her own artistic talent and savvy.

Xia received four awards in 1995, just after she graduated from CAFA: Creative Prize for her graduation work in CAFA, Japan Okamatsu Scholarship in CAFA, Fine Arts Academy Award and Yearly Award of the Third China Oil Painting Exhibition. Since then, her works have been displayed on all kinds of major exhibitions, and Xia has also been full recognized by the art field and market. All works were sold out in her first solo show "Youth Melody" held in Shanghai Yibo Gallery in 1999. It's a myth to domestic gallery of the day, even Yifei Chen was one of the collectors of Xia's works. Hence, Xia's name seems to have connection with Chinese Art Market, though it's not artist's original intention.

Xia became famous rapidly in later 1990s, but she didn't fall as some people worried. When Xia faced the market temptation and impact, she showed her unique clinging and perseverance to protect her superior strength and artistic talent. Xia put her creativity beyond the market, contented with her lot, survived and developed under various situations. Xia always maintained a clear understanding when she faced outside criticism or praise, no arrogant conceit, nor improperly bel i t t le hersel f . She was always i n accordance with her own process to create and explore. Her independent spirit on art, the calm and maturity shown in this respect laid the foundation for her further success.

Her works have become increasingly perfect while she insists on her own independent creation. Especially, her series works of Chinese contemporary female themes opened up a new area for her painting feature. It is also a field nearly no one to have set foot on in Chinese oil painting. The exhibition held after that also has huge success. Xia held "Youthful Memories" paper works show in Taiwan Soka Gallery in 2001, "New Vision of Classic" oil painting exhibition in Taiwan Chin Der Jyu Gallery in 2002, "Harvest of Life" oil painting exhibition in Shanghai Art Museum and National Art Museum of China successively in 2005.

Unique artistic temperament

Elegant girl, fresh fruit and flower are main themes of Xia's creation. The themes depicting of these life scenes also showed Xia's positive and optimistic life attitude and her care of human and nature. Eight years of college education has laid a good foundation for her painting career. From the personality constitution of the painting to unique grasp of the material, from overall layout to detail description, she seems handy and free in paintings. Especially her strong image control ability often surprised people.

The style of painting mirrors the painter herself. Xia's work is filled with youth, romance, passion and naivety. Between thick and thin, cold and warm, touch and paint, spread and smear, penetrate her love to life and her passion to nature. Creative emotional transfer between knives, pens, materials and canvas, and this is also Xia's unique creative style. The thickness or thinness of paint, the coarseness or fineness of texture, the touch, paint, spread and smear of the paintbrush are all based on their own characteristics, and convert to the means of spiritual expression. Those totally casual touch, spread and smear magically emit the fantastic brilliance on the painting.

Sparkling black and white between lead gray color constitute a mysterious shadow order which only exist in her painting. Perfect combination of local abstract and expression with overall realism has run through Xia's creation over the past few years, which is also important reason why her work has unique personality. As Xia's work itself, she is more concerned about the expression of painting language and the transmission of emotion between paintbrush and materials. There is no social criticism, nor concept intervention, and keeping the purity of painting is her biggest feature in paintings Xia is a "pure" artist, who does not rely on concept intervene and material stack, but only keeps a kind of "purity" in the painting and only works on minimum materials. As long as she has brushes, paint and canvas, she can paint as big painting as it could be. Without draft and reference, everything is from the first line and progresses in the painting process. (Jia Fangzhou) Unique language format is pursued by every artist. Different focus of picture elements will be presented in different language format. As pointed out by Li Xiaoshan: Xia has strong digestion. Painters usually imitate those master painters, but Xia's works are totally on her own without anybody's shadow.

Analyzing the relationship between overall and part of the painting, Xia's paintings combine partial abstract with expression of overall realistic ambience, and this is her important feature. People of ten can see and feel profuse and splendid flowers without the growth structure of concrete flower in her piece. Xia has successfully handled various elements in partial processing, like the contrast between black and white, the cold and warm of the color, the purity and turbidity of the hue, the darkness and lightness of the color, as well as its wetness and dryness, the strength and weakness of the light intensity, the form of the color blocks, and the false and true of the paint. The appropriate use of these independent elements inosculate with overall ambience, making the painting splendid and mysterious. The whole and the part matched the best with each other, making her picture colorful and worth seeing.

Analyzing the color of the painting, Xia's works are splendid and full of strange feelings. She uses complex and colorful color to show us a wonderful dream of the woman about youth and life, and creates a dreamily harmony based on seemingly confused brush touch and rich colors. Most protagonists in her paintings are urban women and most of them sitting or standing or leaning on flower clusters, with an expression of happiness, comfortable and self-sufficiency in their motions and attitudes. And it also contains their dreams of youth, romantic sentiment or the memory of the departed youth.

Analyzing the creative techniques of the painting, the unique aspect of Xia's works also benefited from her unique means of operation. Xia mainly uses the skill of kneading and scraping in her creative painting, which is similar to caressing movements. She once mentioned that polish is her favorite work. When she was painting on the canvas, brushes usually don't leave the canvas and doing circular movements. The unique movement of the hand means much more enriched format in her own language. The movement of the hand can reflect the cultivation and level of savvy of the artist, the ability to grasp the materials, as well as the better or worse, the gentle or the heavy, the slowness or the haste of the hand touch. The hand movements of an outstanding artist must be unique and pure.

Analyzing the texture effect of the painting, different texture effects will create different visual experience and it will directly affect the impression of the works. Xia has done very well in this area, and the texture of her woks has relied on its own characteristic then turns into the means of spirit expression. Her exploitation of the texture has never stopped in the initial stage, but throughout the whole creative process, often with brilliant improvisation.

Because of above factors, Xia's art pieces have presented such a unique and appeal ing s tyle. As one of the outstanding young artists born after 1970, Xia has already achieved brilliant accomplishment, but she is still very young, and has a long way to approach. We believe that with her talent, perseverance and positive life attitude, she will surely present a new legend. We will wait and see!