Zhanhong Liao (Netherlands) "It was started as a journal in which to give my homesickness, aspirations, dreams and ideas form, when I arrived in the Netherlands six years ago. Since then it has developed into something unique, something I cannot do without and in which my artistry gains expression. I still enjoy working in my ‘diary’. On the plain paper pages of a ‘dummy’, I paste small things full of memories such as my calligraphic pieces penned on Chinese rice paper, newspaper cuttings, photographs, fabric, leaves, parts of letters from far-away friends and family, pages from an old Sunday-school book that I found in a flea market. I then embellish them by drawing or painting over them with ink, gouache, acrylic or oil paint. It is my memorandum, my passion and my routine. Each page in my diary is a painting in itself. Sometimes it is cheerful, sometimes sombre. With the aid of colour, texture, form, material and symbols, I try to describe my life caught between two cultures. For me the description is personal and realistic, for others perhaps abstract. (…)" From: Timeless Paper, Leiden 2002 © Compres Publishers Ltd