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| Looking Out the Window | Running Girl |
Most of Sun Hong-Wen's paintings narrate the beauty and customs in the countryside south of the Yangtze River. Child-like innocence is also a favored theme. These are expressed in her paintings through the depiction of local women in indigo clothes tending to their worry-free children. Whether the women in the paintings are at work or at leisure, they portray Sun’s preference for a simple life and freedom from worries.
“I don’t consider myself a painter, nor should you,” said Sun Hong-Wen in a very modest observation, this despite the fact that her paintings have been chosen to participate in the National Arts Exhibition in China three times in succession. Her work, “White Orchid,” won first prize in the 40th Zhejiang Arts Exhibition in 1989. Five years later, “Painter Wang Mian” won her the provincial prize of “Excellent Creation” in the 8th National Arts Exhibition. In both 1998 and 1999, her works were chosen to travel to Germany by the Zhejiang Women Artists Delegation. In 1999, “Indigo Cloth” and “Three Buffalos” were chosen for the 9th National Arts Exhibition.
Despite how easy this success may seem, it was more than twenty years in the making. After graduation from the affiliated middle school of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in 1966, Sun’s plan to enter the National Academy of Fine Arts was dashed because of the Cultural Revolution. Fortunately, the selection of her two paintings, “White Orchid” and “An Unwithered Flower,” into the National Arts Exhibition in 1989 served to inspire her to continue painting. Over the years, Sun has traveled to the region south of the Yangtze River and gathered inspiration to create the “Indigo Cloth” series. This region is an area which provides very pleasant pastoral scenery but also an area where the women almost universally wear garments of dyed indigo cloth. To Sun, the color blue is “dream-like.” In 1999, the series put her in the National Arts Exhibition for the third time.
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