Dong Shaw-hwei has embarked on a path that has led her to find a link between Eastern and Western aesthetics. Her foray into Impressionism and subsequently the need to find a channel to express Chinese aesthetic sensibility have represented the distinct phases of a natural process. The genre that has lent itself more than any other to this development is that of the still life, often, and wrongly, considered uncreative. In the still life Dong Shaw-hwei pours her inner gaze to the point of stating: "the still life can be seen as a by-product of my contemplations." For the artist contemplating the still life also means contemplating herself, a certain type of existence, the existence of objects, of the connection between the observer and the observed. In the Eastern tradition, completing a still life is like going through a period of solitude and being filled with serenity. In some ways, the Western painting style has given Dong Shaw-Hwei a mastery of the external forms of objects, while the aesthetic realm of Taoist thought constitutes the fundamental spiritual essence of her creations. Among the most iconic works in the exhibition are those from the Courtyard series, begun in 1995.
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