In part one of the interview on my blog I posted yesterday, I mentioned how my mother supported me to pursue my interest in art in my early years. I'm forever grateful to her. This is a portrait that I did for her in Hong Kong and below is an introduction of the painting and my mother in an oil painting collection to be published in China in the near future.
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Mother 75x47cm 1982 Hong Kong
母親 75X47CM 1982 香港
In 1960, during my second year at the Affiliated High School of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts while I was home for the winter break, I made an oil painting of my mother. That painting was unfortunately lost during the Cultural Revolution. After my graduation, I was assigned to Zhaoqing City in Guangdong Province, which was very far away from my hometown in Hunan. I only received 12 days a year for family leave including the travel time, so my trips home to Hunan were always rushed affairs with little time for painting. It was not until the 1980s that my mother, siblings, and I were all finally reunited one by one in Hong Kong. By that time, my mother was 72 years old. Two years later, we moved to slightly larger rental accommodations and I found time to paint this portrait of my mother.
1960年冬，我正在廣州美術學院附中二年級的寒假吧，趁假回家時為母親畫過一幅油畫像，可惜文革中丟失了。畢業後工作分配在廣東省的肇慶市，離湖南老家太遠，每年探親假連路程也才12天，因而，回湖南探親都是行色匆匆，少有時間作畫。直到1980年，母親與我們兄弟姊妹先後抵港，重新團聚。此時母親已高齡72歲了。再過兩年，我們搬租到稍大的房子，我才抽空為母親作了這幅畫像。
After I came to Taiwan, I happened to mention the tragedy of my parents caused by the cross-strait standoff to Mr. Liu Shaotang, the president of Bibliographies Publishing. Liu expressed his sympathies as well as his admiration for my mother because she managed to raise us all by herself despite everything that she went through.
我到台灣後，有一次與「傳記文學」社長劉紹唐先生談起父母在這海峽兩岸對峙中的悲慘遭遇時他深表同情與感嘆。並直說你母親真是了不起，經歷那麼多苦難，獨力將你們撫養大，真是很偉大。
My mother was born in Taoyuan County, Hunan. She attended the Zhounan Women's School in Changsha and, to escape from an arranged marriage, fled to Shanghai where she enrolled in the Daxia University. After that, she married, had children, and suffered through China's modern history. It was not until the mid-1980s that she was finally able to travel to Taiwan to sweep my father's tomb. When she passed away in 1994, we fulfilled her final wish by laying her to rest alongside my father.
母親，湖南桃源縣人，早年去長沙念「周南女校」，之後為逃婚獨赴上海唸「大夏大學」，結婚、生子，經歷中國現代史中一切苦厄。直到八十年代中才得以到台灣為父親掃墓。1994年，她老仙逝，我們將她與父親合葬，完成她老最後的願望。
My mother was a good and honest woman filled with compassion. She often taught her children that "integrity is the foundation of personal character." She was well-versed in ancient literature and wrote with a neat, beautiful hand. She frequently reminded me of the need to re-read my letters to ensure that they were "fluent and made sense", and to use well-accepted phrases rather than making up unfamiliar terms. How I miss her!
母親善良、誠實，富于同情心，經常教育子女：忠厚為人之本。她古文好，字端正、秀麗。常告誡我寫信要複讀一遍，要『文從字順』。遣詞造句不要自己生造，要約定從俗……啊，我的母親。
