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Artist’s Description: Chinatown Skies depicts a scene from Chinatown in San Francisco and contains a surge of energy in preparation for my trip to paint in the southern city of Dongguan, China in the fall of 2012. It had been my dream to visit southern China since I had spent the summer in Beijing years earlier.
This painting came to fruition while listening to Mandarin CDs and thinking about the
last empress of China as depicted in books by one of my favorite authors Anchee
Min. Details from the lives of royalty during the last dynasty gave me a renewed
appreciation of freedom. I was surprised to discover that the members of the royal
family were each served 99 dishes of food per meal; that they were not aloud to
wipe themselves in the restroom or dress themselves…the emperor had 3,000
concubines to have a better chance of “spreading his dragon seed”…and most
of the women died alone and untouched…and yet they were envied by the public.
I also discovered that Empress Xixi, when not being part of ruling the country,
painted and sold her paintings. Each time I put down Min’s book, I felt so thankful for
my freedom–to know that I get to love whom I want to love, paint what I want to
paint and be who I am. We live in a special time period!
Brooke Harker
