Original Art Stories - Xueling Zou

Chinese New Year is one of the most important traditional holidays and is celebrated on the first day of the year of the Chinese calendar (lunisolar). In China, it is also known as the Spring Festival, or "Lunar New Year". 2014 is the Year of Green Wood Horse in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar, starts on January 31. Like many other cultures, horse is one of Chinese favorite animals, horse is not only a symbol of traveling, but also a sign of speedy success. The horse is an intelligent animal. Horses need to be trained to become useful to humans. Interestingly, Chinese wouldn't let horses do farm work. Instead, all the farmland jobs go to the ox. This is because Chinese believe that horses can help human to win battles. Sitting on a horses back implies that the person is from a noble or higher ranking family. So people born in the Horse year usually care about their dressing, outlook and speech. So place a horse or many horse symbols around to en...

“What i like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.”   ― Karl Lagerfeld As much as I enjoy painting, photography is one of my favorite things to do.  Not because I have to collect enough images for my original art, also I think digital media gives us more creative space, with such a wide range of tools available for self-expression, we should update our skills, and be creative as much as possible.  So get your camera ready. During shopping time, I carry my camera sometimes too.  I asked this young lady if I could capture a photo of this cute puppy Chihuahua in her hand, of course she was happy and I was able to keep this lovely photo. (Please click the image to enlarge) I was looking for a laundromat when I traveled in Mexico.  These two dogs suddenly were running in front me.  I captured their adventure by holding my camera with one hand, the other hand was still c...

Struggling through the whole weekend, finally I finished Petko's portrait based on the only one picture I have ever seen of his - his FAA avatar. I hope it could express my thanks to Petko who had made an eight minutes and fifteen seconds long animated slide show with a beautiful music of my oil paintings on Youtube. After I did a search, and I had found out that I was only the one of one hundred eighteen FAA members Petko made such a wonderful work for! Being an artist, I really admire his great work through his FAA online gallery! His painting style is bold and energetic, really represents his passion and devotion to art and to other artists. Now, I feel that I have discovered his incredible soul is much bigger than ordinary artists. I do need some more English language to help express my respect, my honor and my great thanks to him!! Please visit my online gallery at:  http://xueling-zou.artistwebsites.com/   Here is the animated slide show Petko Pemaro made for my o...

I believe that communication is the main reason to prove that we are social animals, just like horses and dogs. I love to study the relationship between humans and animals, and create a painting on canvas to tell a story through my visual language, my imagination to my viewers. It is why I paint differently rather than just copy a photo. Also, it helps me to learn more and understand better living beings after each painting.  "A lovely horse is always an experience.... It is an emotional experience of the kind that is spoiled by words.  "  - Beryl Markham "He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion."  - Unknown "A horse is the projection of peoples' dreams about themselves - strong, powerful, beautiful - and it has the capability of giving us escape from our mundane existence." ...

Dog and horse are the natural animals to get along with humans! They can remember people even after long separations. They have their own emotional expressions. As a visual artist, I think it is very important to capture their emotion and personal expression, just like when I do the portraits for humans, it doesn't matter which style I use in painting, but the communication is the key for success in painting portraits, I believe! They are loyal, sweet, really your most trustworthy friends. They can understand words better than expected, according to the research, and possess "excellent memories" too! They never leave you, no matter if you are happy or upset, poor or rich, they are always next to you. Just thinking of them, thinking about their best qualities of their personalities, it makes me want to paint them. Hope my paintings can really bring each viewer that kind of happiness:-)! ​Or join me at: FaceBook , Instagram , Twitter , Pinterest

I am pretty sure that I am not the only one Chinese female visual artist interested in studying on black people's face structure, skin tones and the expressions. Since my portrait paintings were uploaded onto the Fine Art America (FAA), I have got mostly positive feedback from the artists over the world. Thanks for that! Born and grew up in Beijing China, studied and lived in Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, traveled to many counties in Asia, Europe and South (Central) America and now I have lived in Silicon Valley for over 11 years. I am always interested in different cultures, different people and different food, no political interest at all. America, is one of the biggest countries with multi-cultural identity and we all admire it. If we only could understand each other from the one universal language - Love; if we could treat each just only one race - the human race. But now in the 21st century, I would never have thought I could be so confused by the question of race in th...