Western Eye, Eastern Gods
A digital print by American-Australian artist David Jay Reed features Buddha and Monkey King, gods from Chinese folk legends. [Photo/China Daily]
Gods and goddesses from Greek mythology are often represented in Western art, but American-Australian artist David Jay Reed is more interested in the gods from Chinese folk legends and Buddhism.
The 63-year-old artist's latest exhibition in Beijing features 12 digital prints of Chinese gods. He is exploring the Chinese gods' world via a Western interpretation.
"I've researched hundreds of Chinese gods on the Internet and selected 12 of the most interesting," says Reed who came to China five years ago.
"Twelve is an important number in China, just like the 12 zodiac animals," he says.
Some of the gods Reed depicts are from popular stories that have been made into movies and TV series, such as the story of Buddha and Monkey King, Guanyin (a Buddhist goddess) and moon goddess Chang'e.
But some are little-known, even to the Chinese, such as the Lady of the Bedchamber, who overseas what happens in the bedroom, and Qing Guang, king of the underworld, who inspects souls in his mirror of retribution.
"It's the visual thing that makes me choose these gods. When I read the story, the image pops up in my mind," Reed says.
Before moving to China, Reed lived in Japan for six years. He says he has spent a long time "immersed in Asian culture".
"Asian cultures seem similar to Westerners. There's Japanish (Japanese-English) in Japan and Chinglish (Chinese-English) in China," Reed says.
When one of his colleagues spoke with him about Chinese culture based on Buddhism, Daoism and tales of myth and legend, Reed found artistic inspiration - so many gods were shared between the belief systems.
The artist has tried different forms of art over the past 30 years including computer graphic design, photography, drawing, watercolor and printmaking.
"Artists in one direction may become very professional. But I try different things with art. For me, art is to change one's life perception," Reed says.
During his time in Japan, he found a sentence in a magazine: "let's get marriaged", which he says changed his perception of English. So he drew a picture of a wedding with the sentence at the bottom. The work won him several prizes.
An Australian hospital once called to tell Reed that one of his works, an etching of dancers, helped cure a patient. The hospital said they wheeled the woman through a corridor with Reed's etching on the wall. The patient pointed to it and insisted she was one of the dancers. Every day she was wheeled down the corridor to look at the etching and her health improved.
Reed was born in Japan in 1950. He lived in the United States and Australia for a long time. When he was working at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, he met a printmaker and he was inspired to begin his own art career. Besides being an artist, Reed is also an art teacher. He is now teaching at an international school in Beijing.
"I don't want to be a full-time artist, otherwise I would get bored and go crazy," says Reed, adding he's planning to draw animal gods of Chinese tales in the future.
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