2019 "Looking East" Exhibit Opening

Description

Jay Alexander’s paintings present a contemporary reinterpretation of several dominant themes in classical Chinese painting: the plum, orchid, flowering plants, birds, and landscapes. He brings his experience and technique to these ancient venerable genres, depicting the above subjects in the moods, seasons and light of his environment. These subjects are expressed through his deep attachment to the natural world filtered through a vast body of theory with metaphysical underpinnings—that art is a spontaneous expression, immediate and irrevocable as life itself, where the essential truth of a painted object is the operation of the spirit (Chi) in life movement (Zheng tung).