Lot 15

East and West Art Gallery, Melbourne, acquired directly from the artist.

Melbourne, East and West Art Gallery, 'Exhibition of Paintings and woodblock prints by Chou Earthstone', May, 1990.

Before Earthstone moved to Australia and built the spacious mountain home in Melbourne, where he now explores various mixed mediums; before he was known as the 'Wild Ink Radical' artist in Taiwan who ravaged the traditional form of Chinese Ink on Rice Paper paintings, he was a graduate of Western fine arts who majored in oil paintings, depressed and often thought about suicide.


Earthstone's father had invested most of the family's earnings so that he could be the only child of all his siblings to go to university. After graduation he decided that he didn't want to be an academic, yet he was unable to tell his father that he had abandoned his academic path just before his promotion to university lecturer to instead become an artist. His father eventually found out from neighbours in humiliation, after he was spotted earning a living by selling stationary at the night market. The lack of inspiration to paint became the least of his worries.


While he was always fascinated with Western art and history, 'Tao De Ching' and 'Dreams of the Red Chamber,' the two works of Chinese literature, gave him a glimpse of light, guiding him out of the tunnel and encouraging him to see the world passing the rules that expected him to conform to. He became just as intrigued with Chinese art and history and began figure sketches with a Chinese brush on rice paper, his first step towards creating art where East meets West.