I discovered — though I doubt that he was lost — Z.Z. Wei a number of years ago in the Patricia Rozar Gallery in Washington. 

He is originally from Beijing but has lived and worked in the Pacific Northwest since he was charmed by the sparse western landscape in the late eighties. Wei reminds me of Iowa’s Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton who lived and worked very close to my neighborhood in Missouri.

They, too were smitten with rural America and chronicled a time and place that now only exists in the halls of their imaginations.   

I would love to have an original above my mantle. In the meantime, I bought a couple of the exhibition posters including the one on the left. Makes a great gift for misplaced mid-westerners.   

Way to go, Wei.