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Original watercolors for sale at charity auction for Heart to Heart

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Painted with Place is a series of landscape watercolor paintings created with materials found in Yunnan. These include tea, coffee, rose petals and dyes made with indigo and gardenia. Charlotte Massey, the American artist behind the collection, painted each image using materials she gathered from her time in Dali and Kunming while on a study abroad program. She told GoKunming:
 

I was inspired to do this project by the natural environments of Yunnan and the materials used by local artisans in Xizhou. The Lanxu Eco-Culture Development Center in Zhoucheng let me scoop up bottles of indigo and gardenia dye that they use for Bai ethnic minority traditional tie-dye workshops. I loved using materials directly from the land to create landscape art. I've painted with coffee before, and I wanted to push the boundaries further.

Charlotte is sharing her work at an art exhibition at Salvador's Loft on Tuesday, July 24 at 7pm. Charlotte is selling the art to raise money for Heart to Heart, a non-governmental organization providing health services to migrant workers and their families. Many pieces have already sold but some are still available. At the event, Charlotte will also demonstrate painting with coffee, fine-ground tea leaves and natural dyes.

This project was heavily influenced by everything Charlotte learned from artisans in Xizhou. There she learned block printing, embroidery, tie-dye and participated in a Chinese painting class. "I appreciate the power art has to create connections between people from different cultures. I've made so many friends through exchanging sketch books and pulling out a paint brush in a coffee shop and doodling the view with my espresso," she says.

Charlotte used the Linden Center in Xizhou as a home base for her explorations of the Dali valley, and while getting out and exploring the mountain temples and other towns along shores of Erhai Lake. She is in Yunnan with the Middlebury School of the Environment, an intensive six-week summer program for undergraduate students studying the natural environment and culture in China.

Images: Charlotte Massey

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Just a quick update on this. There was a great turnout and the auctioning was a battle till the end. Charlotte ended up raising 3675 yuan from her artwork.

Good, that. Guess it's not too easy to sell art in Kunming.

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