April 14, 2016. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50″ 2 hours painting at 貴州省從江縣翠里鄕高華村瑤族老人趙梅80歲

I always wondered how was a life for hill villagers, and what did life mean to them.  Each of their day was identical. No change in neighbourhood. No change in their jobs. No change in their whole community. The biggest issues were birth, aging, sickness, death.

It was observed that on the old folks’ faces, there was not much facial expression. Perhaps their whole life was too hard and they were exhausted to have extra motion, perhaps it was too boring and there were nothing to say or think. 

May be I didn’t understand the beauty of simple life. And I didn’t know how to appreciate it.

The last piece of human life painting in 高華村 during my April 2016 tour was an old women . She was bringing her grand grand grand son with her when modelling because her daily duty was to take care of this kid. Villagers married at around 20, so they would have grand children at 40’s and grand grand children at their 60’s. So and so forth.

The old women was carrying her kid and collecting wood when we first saw her. We found that she had a stereotype image therefore we invited her as a model. She was not 100% happy and was very nervous all the time. But I guessed it was the RMB$40 she cared.

   In her age of 80, she had good health and top shape. I saw many elderly persons living as long as 100, still looking very healthy. If I were born here I might not have the chance to go to college, start my own business or paint after retired. But might be I would be happier and live longer. There was a lot of unanswered questions in my head during the 2 hours I paint him.
 There was always a serious stern look in her eyes. She was old. Sitting still was a difficult task for her. And whenever her kid had a movement, she moved her head and her whole body. At the first few minutes it was absolute difficult for me to get the sketch of her. It was annoying but how could you blame a elderly village women with no idea what we were doing. I had to calm myself down to do as much as possible. Giving up was the main reason of failure. A moving model was not.

This was the first time I painted an old person. Quite difficult to handle those lines on their faces. I were not doing well. But there was always a first time for every successful story. Let’s took the first step and didn’t afraid to get it wrong.

  Model and myself selfire . She never smiled in front of us. Upon my request this was her best smiling look!
  Her cute grand grand grand son 2 years old and dared not take the biscuit I handed to him. He was a nice and well behaved young boy.

  
A larger painting group. We had 10 artists in the whole group. But most of them took photos instead of life painting. They called it 采風. I didn’t know the exact meaning. But seemed that this was a popular pre painting research work in China art circle. Therefore most of these trips were financed by their work related division. And artists treated these trips as part of their work.  

Therefore frankly I am the only keen plein air painting artist in the group. May be I was learning and they were all professional. They didn’t to acquire the necessary skill from outdoor painting. May be it was not effective. May be they are just lazy.