Liu Xiuming's use of color reflects the range of her personal spiritual capacity, while the oft-visited subject of her painting, too, has a spiritual, dreamlike and fantastic quality. The subject that has earned her fame in Vienna, the art capital of Europe, is the classic metaphor for the human condition: clouds.

Throughout history clouds have represented soul, happiness, freedom and struggle. In Liu's Passion of Cloud and Soul's Up and Down, the audience is presented with clouds of purple and blue, stretching into a vast distance. The skybound forms seem almost to move within the frame, as if there may be a soul within, struggling to escape. In The Wings, gray clouds are background to red wings poised to uplift, representing the yearning for freedom and true expression. In A Girl's Dream, audiences detect Liu's own image. She integrates her passion into her works, into the red clouds, and expresses love for the young girls beneath the sky.

Audiences are often taken aback by her Cloud of Life. Here Liu uses purple - a color often symbolizing life - for graphic keynote while joining blue and black with a tint of gold. The delicate layered method is of a classic style, requiring skilled technique and a thorough understanding of color. In Cloud of Life, Liu uses refined pure colors to represent the diverse changes and actions of different layers of the physical subject.

These and other works have been featured at exhibitions in painting galleries, art museums as well as at showings in major cities in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Liechtenstein. Last September, she was in Beijing to present her works at the National Art Museum of China.

Liu takes inspiration from her own life and from the classic art of another medium. At the beginning of each new year, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra plays at the city's Golden Hall. During her 18 years in Vienna, Liu often attended. When immersed in that delightful and complex music, she explains that it is as if her soul is ascending to the sky and beyond. Internally, she is amid the clouds, collecting inspiration from memory, from music. This is the finer essence of what becomes her painting. But art, like life, like a storm cloud, is not all about happiness.

Beautiful Vienna can be a paradise for artists, but in the beginning it was far from so for Liu. The requisite scholarship would only be achieved with straight A's and to keep an apartment, she would work full time at a restaurant. There was a failed marriage, separation from her daughter, exhaustion and sadness. But her personal drive, the love of painting and the artistic atmosphere of Vienna provided inspiration and healed most wounds.

Of particular solace, while painting she would listen to Kuenstlerben Waltz by Johann Strauss. This musical rumination on the artist life would, she explained, inspire her to create works displaying both sorrow and beauty.

Liu now is successful, and her own cloud has ascended in Vienna.

Liu Xiuming:

Born in Hebei Province in 1957, Liu Xiuming went to study traditional Chinese painting at Hebei Normal University, in the Hebei Province. After graduation in 1982, she worked as an art editor at China Youth Press. Impressed by a German expressionism art exhibition, she decided to pursue further study in Austria.

In 1987, she studied oil painting under Prof. Maria Lassnig at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Later, she joined the master classes of Arik Brauer, founder of fantastic realism. In 1993, she was awarded her masters degree.

Liu is now a visiting scholar at the Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University. She also serves as a guest professor at the School of Arts, Hebei Normal University and often gives lectures and holds exhibitions.

(China Pictorial April 1, 2005)