Her art works are very much Americanized and reflect a typical American way of appreciating beauty; they show a natural forthrightness and sincerity. In 2015, I had the pleasure to meet her in a gathering in New York, through my conversation with her, I found her to be a very talented painter, and the fact that the meanings of her works are highly consistent with her own ingenuous nature is a testimony to this. The directness of her works the values of art works are their sincerity and truthfulness, which are the true feelings of a human being. 

Why children are adorable? It is because of their innocence, and the truthfulness of their actions; behind their innocence is their pure of heart, behind their truthfulness is their forthrightness. Painting is a product of human cognitive behavior, it is the derivative of human cognition, a person’s cognitive abilities determine the quality of his/her art works, because of the complexity of the cognitive process, therefore there are different reflections from different stages and angles of the cognitive process, during a person’s up-bringing, his/her living environment, education, culture and religion will influence the inclination and the way of his/her appreciation of beauty.

Tiffany Zhu’s concepts are genuine, without impurity, restrictions and taboos, her modern characteristics are in common with those of Van Gogh, Picasso and Miro’s, but her art works are without any influence of these three. Because she has not received even one day of formal fine arts training, and has not been influenced by painters before her, when she paints she doesn’t have all these other painters in her mind. She is herself, she paints what she sees, her paintings reflect what she saw, all of her art works are done using sketch on the spot to record what she sees, then she relies on these sketches to complete her paintings.

Regardless of the forms of expression, they are all full of life’s tension, they let the viewers feel the painter’s lively energy and this energy which exists in her art works, perfectly reflects the sincerity in her real life. All of her forms of expression are natural and without deliberate attempt to imitate the styles of other painters, some aspects of her artistic expressions might overlap with some master painters, but they are not the results of the influence of these masters. This precisely proves the value of Tiffany Zhu. We can clearly feel this from what have been expressed via her art works. Without utilitarianism, without polluted mind, with purity and truthfulness, these are the values of the paintings of Tiffany Zhu, these are also the characteristics that enable her paintings to touch the heart of the viewers.

The author, Xu Bai Yi is the head of institute of Chinese Classical Painting in the Applied Technology College of JiLin University, and Professor of Arts.