Just when I thought that I had recycled all my old Chinese folk paper cuts into collage art, one more turned up. It was yet another paper cut of a lady riding on the back of a bird. So I carefully cut her out with a utility blade, primed the flimsy paper with gesso and secured her onto primed paper with neutral PH PVA white glue. The next day she was ready to paint. Before painting I added an aura of metal leaf around the figure. She still looked small in her environment so I painted in a third creature underneath the bird. The bird itself I transformed into a human headed harpy-like beast alluding to the one I had read about in the Chinese classic, The Shan Hai Jing (A song of mountains and oceans).
With reddened hair and a color patterned dress, the figure once again has been edged slightly out of China and into Eastern Europe. I cannot say what the turquoise color creature is, but it reminds me of a tapir. And with this small work, my chapter on small paintings based on folk art is closed.
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