I was deeply honored that Ke-Hsin Jenny Chi asked me to write my opinion of her works. But when I sat down to put quill to parchment, I came across my first major hurdle. How does one describe such paintings?

Various words floated across my mind as I sought the answer. The first was 'voluptuous', but that word has always reminded me of Rubens' paintings. The second word was 'lush', but that has been used to the point of exhaustion in descriptions of the works by Claude. Then 'evocative' caught my imagination, and the sense of it struck me as probably the most adequate adjective to describe paintings and drawings that remind me so strongly of the finest classical masters. The problem is that all the words I immediately thought of are fully justified.

Jenny's figure work has always intrigued me. At first glance, one immediately finds parallels with Rubens and Veronese - strong lines, the slight coldness of the flesh tones, the voluptuousness of the figures themselves. And yet the faces are modern: these are images of our own times, when one doesn't say 'voluptuous' unless one wishes to receive a fist in the face. But her figures are heroic - strong thighs and arms, rather determined faces: these are women who evoke a sense of strength, character, independence... Her beautiful painting of Venus with its Claude-like atmosphere is truly lush. But this is no Venus who, on sighting Adonis, is prepared to merely collapse into his arms because of his ineffable beauty. This is a true goddess ready to subject him to close, critical scrutiny and, as in the painting of Diana and Actaeon by Titian, probably more than ready to turn him into a stag if she found a fault. When one looks at the figure of Cupid in the same painting, it's easy to imagine that he is a statue. The background of the painting, so reminiscent of both Claude and Van Dyke, with its Romanesque ruins and mysterious darkness, should bring out the romantic side of the observer, much in the same way that the paintings of Burne-Jones do. But no, there's a sense of sadness in the painting. Perhaps Venus the Goddess of Love is regarding Cupid, fossilized on a pedestal, as something antiquated, unnecessary. And perhaps this is what led me to feel certain wistfulness when I had the pleasure of hanging the painting in my gallery.

There are depths of meanings in Jenny's paintings that require a great deal of study. I could subject her painting of Venus to immense scrutiny and probably still not uncover all the symbolism, but I do sense the ravishing skill and attention to detail that I would find in any of the Old Masters.

It's not only the beautiful renderings of women from Greco-Roman mythology that define Jenny Chi as an outstanding artist. Her still-life paintings are even more exquisite. Her paintings of Vanitas with a Skull, Heloise and Abelard, and the circular rendering of a violin show an attention to detail and a knowledge of both form and texture that I haven't seen in a painting less than 100 years old. I am not a particular fan of still-lives, but Jenny Chi taught me that the subject matter is all-important - the way objects are placed, how they are combined with different media such as glass, pottery, wood, etc., how the play of light on an open book draws the eye to the text there and thus reveals the true nature of the painting.

-Sir Richard Harper