Abstraction

Irene Chow describes her paintings as the products of her spiritual and emotional explorations. Her energetic abstract compositions, executed with dripping and splashing methods of applying ink, may seem to have no connection with the history of Chinese painting except for their materials of ink and color on paper. But as early as the Tang dynasty (618–906), Chinese artists were experimenting with splashed ink to achieve an abstract result. More recent efforts have been influenced by Chinese artists' exposure to Western art and thought, Chow's exposure largely coming through her teacher Lu Shoukun in Hong Kong. Though small in scale, the work shown here is filled with energy and drama.

Born in Shanghai in 1924, Irene Chou married and moved to Hong Kong at the change of government in 1949. She started painting lessons in 1950 under the Lingnan school master Chao Shao-an. For two decades she studiously copied her teacher's work along with landscapes by Song and Yuan masters. This thorough and rigorous training in the Chinese painting tradition has served as a foundation for her experiments and innovations in her later years.