Irene Chou

Life and work

Irene Chou was born in Shanghai, where she studied economics at St. John’s University. Upon graduating in 1945, Chou worked as a journalist for Peace Daily Shanghai. Thereafter she left for Taipei in Taiwan and in 1949 for Hong Kong. She began to learn painting formally in 1954 when she became a student of Zhao Shao’ang, a master of the traditional Lingnan school of painting. In her traditional landscape and bird-and-flower paintings Chou demonstrated a solid grounding in traditional Chinese painting methods such as qiyun (spirit-resonance) and moqi (ink-play).

In the late 1960s Chou get touched with abstract expressionism. The progressive theories on art and ink painting of her colleague Lui Shou-Kwan of the Lingnan School inspired her to experiment with different techniques and various types of paint, including oil, acrylic and watercolor. Kathy Zhang mentioned that artists working in this vein followed Lui’s precepts and combined Western and Chinese art, while striving to retain the essence of Chinese traditional art. In the 1970s Chou began to experiment with different ink wash painting techniques like splash ink, piled ink, and pointillism. The one stroke (Yi bi hua) technique, derived from Zen and Tao has led to her dynamic, abstract paintings—and became her signature style of the 1980s. Her works of the 1980s were representative of the New Ink style emerging in Hong Kong. After the death of her mentor Lui Shou-Kwan in 1975 and her husband in 1978, the style of Chou’s work changed fundamentally. But this depression gave her enormous energy and so her style became bolder and more spontaneous. In the 1980s she won several awards and became a key figure in the contemporary Hong Kong art scene.

In 1991 after suffering by a life-threatening stroke she moved from Hong Kong to Brisbane, Australia. In the following years she studied Buddhism and got interested in Aboriginal painting. In the early 21st century her work became lighter and clearer with contrasting colors. She died in Brisbane, aged 87.

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