Trailside Galleries is pleased announce East Meets West, an exhibition featuring renown Chinese painters Calvin Liang, Huihan Liu and Jie Wei Zhou.   Each artist will introduce a body of working consisting of approximately 6-10 new original paintings.  The show will be on exhibit at the gallery from May 20 through June 1.

The contemporary Chinese art scene has continued to rapidly evolve and gain worldwide recognition, much of it due to increased contact with the West. Artists such as Liang, Liu and Zhou continue to find both critical and financial success as they redefine Chinese art, blending Western influences with their unique and ancient heritage.

Calvin Liang was born in Canton, China and completed his education at the Shanghai Academy of Fine Art. He immigrated to the United States in 1987 where he worked for the animation studios of Disney and Nickelodeon. He is highly regarded for his impressionist interpretations of seascapes, landscapes and architectural subjects.  As a member of the Laguna Plein Air Painters Association and the California Art Club, he won the Award of Excellence at the 10th annual Oil Painters of America National Juried Exhibition.

For this particular event, Liang is focusing on a collection of paintings that feature Chinese hometown boats and water towns in China.  He notes, “The hometown boats are in Kaiping in southern China. These boats were at one point homes for many Chinese who lived out their entire lives there. More recently the Chinese government has moved many of these individuals to apartments dwellings and  the boats are  now a major tourist attraction with the area  now turned into a nature reserve.”

Huihan Liu was born in Guangzhou, China in 1952.   He was trained at the prestigious Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art, receiving a BFA in 1975.  After graduation, he taught at the academy for several years before continuing with the graduate program.   In 1987, he immigrated to the United States, settling in the San Francisco Bay area. Here he continued his art studies at the Academy of Art College, earning a Masters of Fine Art in 1993.

Like many of his contemporaries, Liu was highly influenced by the academic French and Russian schools.  He has since spent the last thirty years as a painter, illustrator and teacher.  His wide range of subject matter includes figurative, still life and landscape pieces.  His figurative paintings often depict the Tibetan people and their lifestyles.  He considers his paintings impressionistic realism; a combination of primary field study and reference, compositional arrangement, color design, accurate detail and spontaneous brushwork and texture.

Jie Wei Zhou is a master realist who works in oil, watercolor and acrylic.  Born in Shanghai P.R. China, Zhou studied Russian and French painting styles while attending Shanghai Normal University and later received a Masters in Fine Art from the Shanghai Drama Institute.   Based in Colorado, he is recognized for this stunning figural works that primarily depict the tribal people of Tibet, Mongolia and China.  He has always loved painting the rich costumes sand cultures of these people.   Zhou says, “I am inspired to depict the Miao ethnic tribe people of their region. My passion for their culture was fostered when I was a college student visiting the Guizhou province during the summer. The elaborate clothing and jewelry are important to their culture because each daughter in a family receives a beautiful dress and headdress that was passed down for generations. I always remember the personal significance of these wardrobes when I depict them in my artwork.”