An artist who has travelled the southern hemisphere with the heir to the British throne opened an international touring exhibition of paintings in his native Devon recently.
A documentary on the wider history of the persecution of Falun Gong called Free China: Courage to Believe has won many prizes. It lasts an hour and has been showing, pre-release, to thousands of invited people around the world. [See URL at the bottom of this article for more information on the film and its awards.] It shows, through the lives of two individuals, how the CCP has used every means to wipe out Falun Gong but that it cannot touch the true hearts of practitioners.
The Art of Zhen, Shan, Ren International Art Exhibition covers this material. Also, in realistic images of the transcendent beliefs of Falun Gong practitioners (higher beings coming to earth, gods guiding people, celestial agents standing their ground in the cataclysmic battle to vanquish evil and restore good) it gives some insight into why practitioners would endure such hardships for so long.
There are many kinds of casualties in this conflict. Mr Cotton mentioned one picture, “An Orphan’s Sorrow” by Xiqing Dong, painted in 2006, which shows a girl with the leather jacket of her father draped over her shoulders, clasping a box containing the ashes of her parents.
Mr Cotton said the little children are often the forgotten people left behind. They lose their homes and carers as, often, their families or neighbours are too afraid to take them in.
The exhibition finished at Kennaway House on October 28. It moves to Cambridge for three days from November 26 and continues in December with a longer run in Bristol (from December 3 – 10).
Mr Cotton travelled with Prince Charles to New Zealand, Australia, and Fiji in 2005 and this year showed images in Messum’s Cork street gallery in London of his part as official painter of a climb up Mount Everest.
The gallery website states, “Using a painting knife exclusively … [H]is soaring views are painted in immediately tangible strokes, using dazzling contrasts of colour and value to share with the viewer the artist’s own ‘gut reaction’ this remarkable landscape and journey.”
From his privations in the Himalayas, Mr Cotton was able to have some insight into the physical side of the situation in China. “I think it’s extraordinary,” he said to one of the exhibition volunteers, “that you’ve brought this exhibition to Sidmouth in Devon so that people here can see what is going on.”
To see the short documentary on organ harvesting in China, click:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvAOOwvJMZs&feature=plcp
For information about screenings of Free China: Courage to Believe, click:
http://www.freechinamovie.com/
For the original interview with Alan Cotton, see:
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