A new seal created by a new friend

My New Seal Carved by Phillip Xu

LauWa - Translation: Laura (Working Baby)

A few months ago I met a wonderful gentleman by the name of Phillip Xu. We started chatting about Chinese Art, China, and our mutual love of Kochuchang Chicken (my recipe was courtesy of Chef Lynn Crawford). The rest, as they say, is history.

Phillip is not only a Master Chinese Brush Painter, but a Master Stone Carver of chops - used to generate the red seal on Chinese art. Phillip Xu recently created 108 chops/seals for the Beijing Olympics and he is also an Artistic Director on many movies made in China.

Phillip (commonly known as ‘Stone Man’) generously agreed to create a new chop for my painting, ‘Road to Golden Mountain’ for the Asian Arts and Culture Trust exhibition in May 2022. When we met to hand over the new chop (and of course we met at a Tim Hortons’), we discovered that the stone for the chop was purchased when he was in Beizhen. That was one of the cities where I exhibited in 2018 and it is such a lovely area in the NE region of China.

In Chinese, my name is Lau Wa, translated to working baby. It means I was born working and I will die working (my friends laughed when I asked about the ‘retirement’ issue).

This seal is a horizontal design, right side is Lau and the left side is Wa.

The character of this style is rooted/based on the ancient style in Qin dynasty  (B.C. 230- B.C. 215 +-) which most of the seal carvers use as the standard.

Phillip Xu gifting Laura with a copy of his book of seals