Heartland   by   Donna Zhang Oct 29 - Nov 5, 2011 Downtown, Bow Valley Square Location  Prices include framing.
"Innocent Age" Oil on Canvas, 40" x 30" Please call for availability.	"Doorway" Oil on Canvas, 40" x 30" Please call for availability.	"Shepherd Girl" Oil on Canvas, 30" x 36" Please call for availability.
"Hope" Oil on Canvas, 30" x 24" Sold	"Little Coral" Oil on Canvas, 24" x 24" Please call for availability.	"Sweet Cherry" Oil on Canvas, 24" x 24" Please call for availability.
"Mixed in the Colours" Oil on Canvas, 24" x 30" Please call for availability.	"Into the Horizon" Oil on Canvas, 30" x 24" Sold	"Come Join Me" Oil on Canvas, 24" x 18" Please call for availability.
"Sunny Day" Oil on Canvas, 18" x 14" Please call for availability.	"Rose Red Baby" Oil on Canvas, 18" x 14" Please call for availability.	"Natural Cowboy" Oil on Canvas, 16" x 12" Please call for availability.
"Soft Breeze" Oil on Canvas, 16" x 16" Please call for availability.
More paintings ...

Donna Zhang  

Donna Donghong Zhang was born in the Jilin Province of China in 1958. She enjoyed art from an early age, recalling that as a child she would playfully give expression to her friends’ wishes for new shoes or toys by sketching them on paper. She later went on to study art for about 13 years, achieving mastery in the techniques of etching.

Donna is formally trained as an art educator, first at an institute in China in the 1980s, and during the l990s at Japan’s Saitama University where she obtained a Master’s Degree of Arts.

She has she traveled extensively to such places as Tibet, Japan, Egypt and Australia and uses the material gathered on her travels for her paintings. The year 1999 was pivotal for Donna. She accompanied a small group to a remote region of Tibet on an ecological trip whose goal was to preserve the habitat of an endangered monkey. Once within Tibet, she came into close contact with its indigenous peoples and was immediately struck by their strength, dignity and openness. She was deeply moved by the immediacy and warmth of the experience, which stood in marked contrast to the reservedness that typifies many urban cultures. The 1999 trip and two further trips in 2001 and 2002 were the inspiration for Donna’s current work in portraiture, which reflects better than words ever could the profound beauty and resilience she sees in the faces of her subjects. As Donna says simply, “Their clothes are not clean, but their hearts are pure.”

Artist Statement:

The relationship between nature and human society is complex and amazing at the same time. The nature of this relationship varies to some degree depending on where you are in the world. Whenever I go to a new place, I always like to place both nature and human society under a microscope for review. I always find myself amazed with discoveries: new sense of amazement, mystery, and sudden realization. These feelings excite and inspire her to bring my feelings onto the canvas.