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Born in the year of the tiger, Li Xing-Bai, China's distinguished artist-scholar and designated "National Treasure," shares the international community anxiety for the survival in the wild of the noble animal that China traditionally considers to be "king of beasts."
Recently, in both China and North America, Li has publicly dedicated his talent to a series of works celebrating the tiger. With deep concern, Li declares: "I mean to put the spotlight on the soul and integrity of the tiger, to help others see why its vitality is venerated, to display across different cultural concepts and other associations, the various aspects and characteristics of the tiger's lifeforce that humans rightly admire."
| Li is inspired by personal observation of varied individual tigers that he feels privileged to have seen during his Sichuan youth. Recently, in both China and North America, Li has publicly dedicated his talent to a series of works celebrating the tiger. |  |
Globally renowned, painter-educator Li Xing-Bai was declared "most promising young artist in China", at the age of 21. Since then and for over fifty years, Li has been honoured on either side of the Pacific ocean, where he chooses to go alternately to spend his precious retirement time and energy while creating new works in paint, calligraphy and print.
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"To truthfully emulate that spirit, as humans we must manage our purposes so as not to destroy the tiger's natural habitat, its actual existence in the world's great pattern. I fear that the tiger might even become, for my China-born and North American-born grandchildren, only a mythcal beast as is today's dragon of the Orient!" |
