New takes on old seasons
Drawing on animals such as foxes, elephants, rabbits and goats, Chiu’s carefully rendered magical images corresponding to the 24 solar terms are deftly rendered and ingeniously arranged.
For instance, a deer that seems to have run out from the wizarding world represents the last solar term of spring: “Grain Rain.”
Tawny in real life, here the deer is light pink, with antlers shaped like peonies. The beautiful, magical style of design was inspired by a story describing the legend of “Grain Rain” that Chiu just happened to read. In the legend, there was a young person known as Grain Rain, who was a very good swimmer. When the floods came, he saved a peony. Later, the peony turned into a fairy who expressed her gratitude, and he fell in love with her. One day, Grain Rain died attempting to save his true love. So now, every year at that time, rains fall from heaven, and peonies bloom. The peony fairy of the story became the inspiration for Chiu’s Grain Rain Deer.
Chiu embellishes the painting with images of turmeric, which is harvested during Grain Rain and is used in Chinese medicine as an antipyretic and a diuretic.
Chiu has captured “Start of Autumn,” when the heat of summer abates, with an image of a squirrel.
She ignored the description of “Start of Autumn” that is found in “Shixun Jie,” a chapter of the Yi Zhou Shu (“Lost Book of Zhou”). Instead, she picked a squirrel to play the leading role for fall. Squirrels are suggestive of pine cones in Chinese since they are literally known as “pine rodents.” She has added an image of the Asian fruit longan, whose translucent flesh, black pit and brown peel set the painting’s visual tone. Start of Autumn Squirrel was thus born.
In contrast to the bleakness of fall’s arrival depicted in Start of Autumn Squirrel, Chiu depicts the heat of “Summer Solstice” with reds, yellows and greens. Cicadas, whose songs fill summer days, are an obvious choice to take the leading role in depicting that solar term.
Cicadas and watermelons, two things associated with summer, are the principal elements of her composition on the “Summer Solstice” solar term. But because there is also a mention of deer antlers in the Yi Zhou Shu’s description of that period, Chiu’s illustration Summer Cicada, in addition to featuring the deep greens of watermelons, also has an image of deer antlers that can be found within the delicate patterns of the cicada’s wings.
For “Major Cold,” which conveys a sense of the year coming to an end, Chiu created the illustration Major Cold Eagle, which draws inspiration from a passage in Yi Zhou Shu: “At Major Cold, waterfowl start laying eggs. Later, falcons hunt prey and rivers freeze over.”
A soaring eagle is the image that Chiu chose to use for the solar term “Major Cold.” The deep blue and purple coloration and the images of frozen rivers found in its plumage convey a sense of winter’s bitter cold. The work has a striking elegance, and close inspection reveals that Chiu adopted daikon radish leaves for the eagle’s tail, since the radishes are harvested during the winter.
Coming after Minor Cold Pigeon, Major Cold Eagle is the last of the 24 solar terms and the final one to receive its own animal representation. Without having previously received professional training, Chiu thus created her career’s first series of illustrations.
Start of Autumn Squirrel, Frost’s Descent Goat, Major Cold Eagle… The illustrator Cinyee Chiu has put a creatively beautiful and magical new take on the 24 solar terms of the traditional Chinese calendar.
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