Our Community Wing Art Gallery provides a venue for area artists and groups to display and sell their artwork. These free exhibitions provide our members and guests the opportunity to experience the creativity found in the Augusta area. If you are interested in purchasing one of these paintings, please call 706-364-5762.
Miaomiao Cui’s passion for art was genetically inherited from her great grandfather who was the last local governor in Fuxian, a seaside district in northeastern China. Painting was his favorite way to relax after a long day of political work. His huge paintings in the traditional style were gorgeously eye-catching. The passion for art was passed down to Miaomiao’s grandma and then to Miaomiao Cui. She was very addicted to paintings and super sensitive to colors. Since her childhood, she studied traditional Chinese paintings with a famous local artist. She was inspired to become an artist by the famous Chinese female artist, Yu-liang Pan by watching her TV show. Although her life’s responsibilities took her in many different directions and she never had a chance to enter an academic art institute, her dedication and passion for art kept her painting in her leisure time. In her 20s she was a college teacher and a famous journalist who received multiple state and national prizes in China. In 2009, she lived in the U.S. as a visiting scholar and earned her Masters of Arts in Education. She also moved with her Army Officer husband who was assigned in Seoul, South Korea. There she learned Korean painting techniques. After that, she returned to the U.S. with an enlightened spirit of both Eastern and Western cultures that showed in her paintings that were displayed in several local and international art exhibitions. Her fame with the local art scene attracted restaurant owners and hospital managers to commission her to paint murals in their establishments. Her work is a nexus of arts from the West, the East, Ancient, and Modern. These paintings draw the audience in with the tension between the familiar and the unfamiliar to trigger the viewer’s desire to explore the elegant oriental aesthetic beauty.
Imagism originated in the United States and Britain during the early 20th century. Imagist poetry and painting are closely related by the short and concise vivid artistic images which express a theme. Miaomiao Cui’s art not only embodies the language of poetic beauty but also reveals her emotions behind her images. Her art is also impacted by oriental expressionistic aesthetics which blend representative Chinese cultural elements. Her art thus combines imagism and expressionism to express tangible physical images with intangible spiritual connotations.
