Many of the works at this 90-year-old painter’s ongoing first solo exhibition titled ‘Between Two Centuries’ feature old, ordinary women whose wrinkled faces testify to the hard and rich experiences of their personal lives and country.Bich recalls the countless rural women she has met in her lifetime, women who contributed to Vietnam’s war efforts by staying behind, taking care of the young and old, and working on the home front while the men had all gone off to defend the country.”Whenever I went, I met heroes. Their hands, feet and visages showed the hardships they had gone through.”She may not make much money, but she has been recognized for her original efforts. For instance her meticulously painted silk portrait of a supposedly unattractive subject, Ngu, an old beggar she met on the street and befriended, titled ‘Ba Gia’ (Old Woman) was awarded the first prize at the 1993 Vietnam Fine Arts Association exhibition. Mong Bich’s silk portrait ‘Ba Gia’ (Old Woman) won the first prize at the 1993 Vietnam Fine Arts Association Exhibition. Photo courtesy of L’Espace. According to Prof Nora Taylor of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, an expert on Vietnamese art, some young artists at…