ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Cui Jinzhe, pen name Qiu Shi, painter, poet, multidisciplinary artist. She was obsessed with painting, writing and musical practice since her childhood. Jinzhe was born and raised in Dalian, China, where she studied painting at No. 15 Art Middle & High school, visual communication for BA and mix-medium for MA at School of Arts Design from Dalian University of Foreign Languages and Dalian Polytechnic University.

Jinzhe's creation mainly focuses on the following three directions: First, to observe and reflect on the present daily life and surroundings, and then create visual images and texts inspired by the inner reverie and intuitive imagination generated by her solitude and cognization . Two, based on Chinese classical literature or ancient wisdom sutras, integrate the perception and experience of her individual's current life, and create paintings and texts that combine ancient traditions and contemporary culture and art form. Third, starting from painting and poetry practice, through experimentation and the interaction with multiple disciplines and diverse audience context, to derive a new contemplative process and artistic experience for community development and public art genre.

Jinzhe's work often explores the integration between Chinese ink paintings, calligraphy practice with contemporary visual expression, as well as interdisciplinary practice with public art and performance landscapes. She experiments the traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy elements with skillfully rendered images and diverse, decorative elements: details from Buddhist symbols, characters in the ancient myth legend and Chinese auspicious patterns which are built and disassembled within the abstracted, accidental landscapes of ink blots and spills. Exploring how patterned, decorative elements dissolve into an ink-splashing-landscape, Jinzhe is interested in constructing a unique, fantasy, and sometimes chaos world which reflects her daily contemplation on nature and life. Encountering images of characters, realistic and fantastic, within the risk of disintegration and destruction, she is examining a new painting language between traditional meditative beauty and contemporary dynamic vitality. Jinzhe's legendary figures are at times united and at other times mutated and revealed in their transitory, shifting, and contingent forms. She is passionate on imagining and constructing diverse worlds combined with a sense of the familiar as well as the surprising, a yearning for antient times as well as the aspiration for future. At the end of 2008, Jinzhe moved to Canada and started her professional career as an independent artist in Edmonton. Since 2011, her work has been exhibited and collected by galleries and art organizations of Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto in Canada, Colorado, Vermont in US, Dalian, Heshun, and Wuyang in China.

Deep thanks to Canada Council for the Arts, Edmonton Arts Council, City of Edmonton, Edmonton Heritage Council, Saskatchewan Arts Board, Government of Saskatchewan, City of Saskatoon, Access Copyright Foundation, Hemera Foundation, Zen Mountain Monastery, Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, Mactarggart Collection, Bruce Peel Special Collections, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Siddhartha's Intent and everyone like you who have made Jinzhe' s various projects possible and be seen.

Deep thanks to the traditional land on which I reside, is in Treaty Six Territory. Many thanks to the love, kindness and wisdom of the people on this land from the bottom of my heart.

Deep thanks to all awakened ones in all time and space who hold and inspire me to practice art as the nourishment for all beings' liberation and enlightenment.