Wilson Shieh, a Hong Kong artist born in 1970, is to a large extent a figure painter in the traditional mode. His paintings are executed in ink and colours on silk against a plain ground and with meticulous brushwork, yet they are far from traditional in style. In this series he has depicted naked figures alongside ceramic vessels and models from different historical periods ranging from around 200 BC until the late 1700s.
The figure here stands in an Yixing ware teapot, with the lid on his head and a spilt teacup to his left. Yixing is in Jiangsu province, not far from Shanghai, and is renowned for brown or purple clay tea wares that date from the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) onwards.
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