Jorge Fuentes
神龙图 “The divine dragon”
Jorge Fuentes is a dear friend of the Li family, a geoengineer and a Zumba instructor. He helped build out Xiang Li's studio in Grafton, Massachusetts, and the whole basement given over to her paintings.
Xiang painted him to say thank you. She and Jorge were both born in a Year of the Dragon — 1940, 1952, 1964, 1976, 1988, 2000, 2012, 2024 — and dragon years are said to make people who are energetic, goal-oriented, romantic and hard to talk out of things.
He built the studio; she painted him riding a dragon out of it.
What is in this painting
Xiang Li builds a portrait out of creatures. Each one is a claim about the person sitting among them.
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1 The title
Top left, in a bordered cartouche: painting of the divine dragon.
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2 The dragon
Both of them were born in a Year of the Dragon. It is not carrying him — they are moving together.
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3 The pearl
In his open palm. The flaming pearl is what a Chinese dragon chases; here somebody is simply holding it out.
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4 The raised hand
Top right, ringed, open — the gesture of a dance instructor rather than an emperor.
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5 The wristbands
His own, painted exactly, on the arm of a man in imperial silk.
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6 The plaid
Under the robes: a Zumba instructor's tied shirt, in the same brushwork as the dragon's scales.
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7 The wave
The whole scene comes up out of the sea at the bottom left.
The painting, out in the world
