In the contemporary realm of Chinese art, female artists are a powerful force that cannot be underestimated—and within this wave of artists, the young and talented Xia Junna is especially significant. While other artists constantly pursue changes and stress the differences of personality or individuality between their characters or themes, she chooses a quite different path, a path in which most of her themes incorporate young girls and flowers. One of Xia’s trademarks is to softly blur the appearance of her characters in a way that subtly fuses them with the background.

Once, while being interviewed, she mentioned her original aspirations behind painting, “The difference between realist paintings and my work is that I do not focus around a thematic pursuit in my paintings. My work stresses particular kinds of atmospheres, illusions, reverie, or thoughts that erratically waft around the sky. You might ask, ‘How come this person looks identical to this person—but yet the two also seem so different?’ But when you take a closer look, you will find that the aura of the subject remains constant—always a little bit damp, misty, warm, with a melancholic, fuzzy, dream-like mood.” Indeed, the majority of scenes Xia Junna portrays revolve around her own idyllic scenes of life, forever flirting with perfection, while altogether delicate and exuding a sense of noble, refined temperament.

“Summer Time” portrays a classic theme—a girl and flowers—in which a girl in a long skirt stands on the left while flowers stretch out over the rest of the canvas. The young girl and flower meticulously depicted by the artist sway with ease and drift without aim, revealing a sense of mellow purity and poetic mood that is lightly alluring. Xia’s work usually appears in series. Full of mystery, this piece, painted in 2012, and another piece created in the same year, Four Seasons, feature entirely different approaches while achieving equally remarkable effects.