TIBETAN GIRL

AI XUAN

In 1973, for the first time I entered the Tibetan - inhabited area in western Sichuan. I was around twenty years old. At that time I was very curious about Tibet. This grassland and the Chengdu Plain were simply two different worlds. All fields of vision there, the sky, the land and the people, created extremely great contrasts with those from the area three thousand meters below. I have almost gone crazy being stimulated by those contrasting new things. Everyday from dawn to sunset, I captured almost everything I could see with a pencil to fill my appetite. But at spiritual levels I was on a sleep

mode. That “first-time” exotic feeling turned me into a “perpetual motion machine” that replicated everything that had happened.

– Ai Xuan

As a son of the prominent poet Ai Qing, Ai Xuan ranks the national-level First Rate Painter in China. In his youth, Ai Xuan served on a military farm in Tibet for 4 years, and has visited Tibet even since. He goes to Tibet every year since 1974 in order to collect inspirations for his works, whether they are landscape or figurines, all became the focus of his painting subject matter. The immense views of the surroundings made a great impact to him. Amongst the snowy wildness and the breathtaking tranquility, he was inspired. The boundless bleakness and loneliness made him review his impressions of this mysterious land. This work, created in 2011 by the artist is one of the early work of his ink on paper series. The brushwork is fine and smooth, carrying subtle emotion of the artist. It is a representative work of Ai Xuan’s debut ink on paper exhibition in 2013.