Richmond Times Dispatch and Style Weekly Magazine

Richmond Times Dispatch and Style Weekly Magazine
— Deborah McLeod, Curator, Writer, Art Critic

“An acutely accomplished painter in Western classical technique, ……a young Chinese woman who takes her place as witness to the scene as well as protagonist. This unmitigated Asian modesty, concealing her flesh while her fashionable companions offer milky shoulders, et al. in presenting her character, Zhao gives the viewer three complex ideas to consider in weighing Western values against Eastern ones. First is the consideration of self in portraiture, an idea that is not incorporated in Chinese or Japanese art, but is a prominent feature of Western study and often an element of the paintings Zhao adapts. The second is the male artist’s definition of the female subject and her complicity as model. And the third is the contrast between inheriting Western culture and assuming it by degrees in establishing coexistence.”

– Deborah McLeod, Curator, Writer, Art Critic