Ink on paper

Signed on the front.

This artwork comes with an external frame

Ink illustration of an abandoned mansion in the countryside near Jiangmen City, China. I found a guy who was the 'groundskeeper' for the owner that lived in the city and had the spare keys. He was happy to let me in for a look around. No electricity. No residents since the days of the Culture Revolution. To the right of the main house stood a small building like a servant's quarters. Inside the man showed me the spot where the Red Guards executed eleven Taiwanese spies one after another.
The main building interior was eerie. The rooms were huge with high ceilings. Scattered dust-covered wood furniture littered the rooms untouched for aeons. The ceiling of each room was decorated with hand-painted oval landscape scenes in traditional nineteenth century. style. As the paintings were unsigned and the artists obviously long dead with the pieces decaying, I photographed each ceiling piece and repainted in detail with gouache on high quality paper. I have five painted reproductions of the artwork inside.
The compound was encircled by a high stone/brick wall approximately eight feet in height. A walk up flat roof giving three-sixty degree views of the surrounding countryside. Beside the mansion was a lake. Possibly beautiful back in pre-industrial times but as of my visit it was a floating graveyard of thousands of dead fish, poisoned by industry.
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The illustration depicted has a number of age-related vertical crease-lines and some ageing heat discolouration which is visible in the photographs. The frame in the photograph is glass plated generic intended to preserve the illustration.