For more information about Wills’ show, call 329-9747. SPECIAL TO WEST HAWAII TODAY ADVERTISING Rumley Art and Frame Gallery is featuring award-winning and master Chinese brush painter Shirley Pu Wills’ works, including koi fish art, Hawaiian flowers and birds and
SPECIAL TO WEST HAWAII TODAY
Rumley Art and Frame Gallery is featuring award-winning and master Chinese brush painter Shirley Pu Wills’ works, including koi fish art, Hawaiian flowers and birds and other Chinese brush paintings in a one-woman art exhibit Saturday through Wednesday in the gallery located at King Kamehameha’s Kona Beach Hotel. The public can meet Wills during the opening reception from 2 to 7 p.m. Saturday. Pupu will be served. Don Fisher will perform music.
Wills was born in Tokyo in 1951. She is of Chinese heritage. At the age of 4, her parents saw her creativity in art and hired a Japanese sumi-e teacher.
A style of minimalist brush painting, sumi-e uses a combination of water and ink. “The style originated from the Chinese Sung Dynasty, 960-1279 A.D., and the words ‘su’ and ‘mi’ come from the Chinese words ‘sui’ for water and ‘mo’ for ink,” according to Wills.
In 1958, at the age of 7, her family moved to Queens, N.Y. After earning a bachelor of fine arts degree with a major in painting and minor in art education in 1974 at the Pratt Institute, Wills was hired by Liberty House and was flown to Honolulu to work as a fashion illustrator. At Liberty House, she created drawings of dressed female figures for advertising campaigns. Being in Hawaii, Wills rediscovered her Chinese heritage and culture through the University of Hawaii with the late Master Lam Oi Char.
Wills subsequently returned, however, to live with her family, where she resided in New Jersey for 40 years. She spent 10 years studying Chinese brush painting from various Chinese masters residing in New York City, a major world art center.
“What’s amazing about Chinese brush painting is that you imagine what’s not there … my paintings of koi fish has no depiction of water, yet you know the water is there because the fish are so fluid-like,” Wills says.
Wills created a successful reputation and career for 20 years in New York and the metropolitan area being represented by the Phoenix and Ceries Gallery through the Asian American Women’s Artist’s Alliance since she was one of the founders. She has received numerous awards and is president emeritus of the Sumi-e Society and founder of the New Jersey chapter. She has been teaching Chinese brush panting for 17 years. She first taught at Montclair Art Museum and later at the prestigious China Institute of America in New York City, Drew University and State University of New York.
She has made the Big Island her home since 2003. She is also currently being featured in Ke Ola Magazine.
For more information about Wills’ show, call 329-9747.
