Anna Wu Weakland's studio looks too tidy to belong to an artist. With its long, sparkling white table and jars of clean brushes neatly sorted by size, it seems more like an elementary school art classroom at the beginning of the fall semester. It has to be this way, says the robust septegenerian, "so I can feel I'm free to create." In fact, her studio at the Cubberley Community Center is an exhibit of sorts, its walls lined with examples of her work from various stages of her long and productive career.

"There are so many artists out there, one has to offer something very special that almost only you can do," said Weakland, who came to New York City from Shanghai, China, in 1947.

What is unique about Weakland's art is how it brings together her two worlds. She describes it as "a Chinese image with a Western technique."

Her paintings are influenced by her travels--the foliage of a Japanese tree here, a Southwestern American urn there--and considering she has been everywhere from Indonesia to Istanbul, her exhibits read like a postcard collection from exotic ports of call.

"I travel all the time. I travel all over the world," Weakland said.

When she came to Columbia University for graduate work in sociology, Weakland was 22. Her English was good, the product of an intensive education from some of China's top private schools.

She completed all the course work for her doctorate, but she didn't write the dissertation. While living in New York City, she started to cultivate her interest in art, attending classes and going to museums.

Opportunities for well-educated women in China were "wide open" at the time, Weakland said, and she was expected to return to fulfill her duty to the country as a professor at her alma mater, Shanghai University.

She said becoming an artist would have been seen as self-indulgent.

"If I stayed in China, I would never have become an artist," she said.

But political circumstances decided Weakland's future for her. In 1949 the bamboo curtain fell over China when the Communist Party took over. Weakland wasn't allowed to return.

She met and married an American, John Weakland, a young psychologist who later became world-renowned for his specialty, brief therapy: the idea that with 10 sessions, a patient could overcome a general sense of malaise or unhappiness.

He brought his new wife to Palo Alto in 1953 when he took a position at Stanford University.

Anna Wu Weakland's reputation as an artist grew. In 1965 she had her first solo show at the Stanford Museum of Art. She has since shown at the DeYoung Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Marin County Civic Center.

In 1978, while exhibiting her work at the University of British Columbia at Vancouver, Weakland got a call from Canadian Pacific Air, a Canadian airline, asking her whether she would be interested in leading a small group through China.

China had offered the airline a quota of 1,000 passengers to visit the country. At the time, American airlines were still not allowed to land there. Weakland quickly organized a 25-member group.

She was amazed by the changes she found.

"It was so different, they felt like the Americans came from Mars," Weakland said.

She did five more tours for the airline and three others for a travel agency in Los Angeles after the borders were opened to Americans.

Her friends have been encouraging her to lead another trip, and she feels the time is right. At the end of May, she will lead a 17-day trip she calls "The Best of China" with the help of Dale Johnson Travel in Palo Alto.

Weakland will lead her group through Beijing, on a Yangtze River cruise, to Xi'an to see 6,000 life-size terra cotta soldiers buried in the tomb of an ancient leader, through the mountains of Guilin, to the sophisticated metropolis of Shanghai and, finally, to Hong Kong.

"I am a true traveler, and I love adventure," she said.

When Anna Wu Weakland speaks it is with the quiet confidence of someone who knows herself very well. Her words are thoughtful, very specific and clear, unlike the abstract visual designs of the art work that has made her an internationally known artist.

The colors of her art work, however, often mirror her intensity toward life.

Although Anna sees herself primarily as an artist, she is also a teacher and benefactor to her community. As an artist she can point to more than 30 exhibitions of her work at major institutions across the globe. The majority of these have been one-person exhibits of her paintings where she often utilizes Western painting techniques to portray ancient Chinese themes.

In addition, her work is held in the collections of several major museums and corporations. As she likes to say, "art is the food of challenge and ideas." Her art has nourished her well during a productive career that has spanned almost half a century.

She has always been an intuitive teacher, as a young girl in China teaching an illiterate man to read or as a mature artist working with students at her Palo Alto studio. "Teaching is important. It is a way to pass on our culture." She volunteers regularly to present programs on Chinese painting, art, and culture at local high schools, colleges, and other civic organizations. An activity that has paralleled her involvement in art. This is the generosity of someone who "never thinks about getting, (but) you just do."

Anna was born in Shanghai, China in 1924. She was eldest daughter of six children. Her father was well educated and moderately successful, so the family was fortunate to be able to live an upper-middle class existence.

Anna's father was her role model and source of her ambition.

At the age of five she knew she wanted to become a highly educated person; a scholar in the Chinese sense, knowledgeable of both modern and ancient China. Although it was not yet fashionable in Chinese culture, Anna's father required that all of his children, females included, be college educated. It never crossed Anna's mind that she could not become the scholar she dreamed of being, even though her mother was herself uneducated (the existing tradition). Anna was initially tutored at home, completing her secondary education at an all girls school in Shanghai. In 1943, after a period of very intense and dedicated study she graduated with a BA from the University of Shanghai. She was only 19.

After obtaining her BA, Anna began working in the advertising industry in Shanghai. ln 1945, she opened her own advertising agency, becoming the first woman in China to do so. Desiring to continue her education to achieve her goal as a scholar, Anna left China in 1947 to attend either the University of Chicago or Columbia University. She had been admitted to and offered financial support by both universities.

Anna would have liked to apply to Harvard, "the only other school worth considering at the time," but Harvard did not accept women.

She enrolled at Columbia University with the intent of acquiring a Ph.D. in sociology. Anna had completed her course work (acquiring her MA in 1948) and was working on her dissertation when the direction of her life began to change.

Anna often gave lectures and presentations at the China Institute in New York City, to introduce Americans to China and Chinese culture. Her ability to deal with both English and Chinese (she was fluent in the major Chinese dialects) made her a perfect choice to act as the translator for Wang Ya-Chun. Wang was a well known Chinese painter recently brought to this country (and Columbia University) to curate a show of Chinese art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Although Anna's early education had included calligraphy, the basis of all brush work in Chinese painting, she did not show any significant interest in art until she met Wang. The next several years were exciting years for Anna as she "discovered" art, both Western and Asian. She began a study of Chinese painting with Wang, abandoning her dissertation research in sociology ("painting was more exciting, more fun than sociology.")

This transition was not accomplished without considerable anguish, since she had been assured of a faculty position at the University of Shanghai once she had obtained her Ph.D. Even today, after almost 50 years as an artist, she feels no regret about her decision.

"If a (new) opportunity comes into your life that feels right (you must) jump at it," she says.

Anna continued to paint and study Chinese art in New York City until she moved to the Bay Area in 1953. During this time she was still associated with the China Institute, as a teacher of Chinese Painting.

In 1950 Anna married John H. Weakland, a fellow student at Columbia University. John Weakland was a psychotherapist who had a long and productive association with the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto. Their marriage of 46 years ended with John's death in July 1995.

Anna has three children, now grown and married, two sons, Alan and Lewis, and one daughter, Joan. In addition she is a grandmother with two grandchildren.

During those first years in California, Anna studied Western painting at Stanford University. In her art work she started to apply Western painting techniques to traditionally Chinese subjects. The numerous group (starting in 1953, Hunter College, NY) and one-person exhibits (starting in 1959, De Young Museum, San Francisco) which followed have been a testament to the success of this artistic vision.

Away from her art, Anna tends to spend her time reading and traveling. Although these two activities are signatures of the scholarly life she visualized as a small child, they both act as sources of ideas and inspiration for her art work. She regularly visits China, touring the well-known as well as the remote areas. During these travels she has managed to climb all five of the scared mountains of China. She loves to cook and has on occasion given programs on Chinese cooking to local organizations. She keeps physically healthy with a regimen of aerobic dancing (which she will demonstrate to visitors), tennis, and walking.

To focus more clearly on her art, Anna has consciously acted over the years to simplify her life. In this sometimes lonely career she found constant encouragement and support from many people. Perhaps the most meaningful was the undemanding support and encouragement of her mother, father and husband, she says.

Her mother, who always felt that Anna would be successful, perished in Communist China, never knowing of her daughter's successful career in art. Her father, with great difficulty and danger, had managed to escape to Hong Kong. Her husband was very proud of her achievements and a consistent encouragement to her, often bringing colleagues home to show them her latest work.

Looking back, Anna finds that she "had a very interesting life." Her constant goal has been to do work that is meaningful and produces happiness. She is blessed with a constant stream of new ideas "to create the art work." In fact there has never been enough time for all the new ideas. It has been a life filled with hard work and study. Today she continues to learn by teaching others and by being open to being taught; at heart she is still the scholar of her youth.

"If I had stayed in China I would never have become a painter," says Palo Alto artist Anna Wu Weakland. "In China, painting is regarded as a hobby rather than a profession."

Weakland left China to take graduate courses in sociology at Columbia University with the intention of returning to China upon completion of her studies. "China has always valued bright, educated women. I was very much needed and thought I could be of great service to my country," she recalls. In 1949, however, communism swept through China and Weakland remained in the United States.

Destiny took Weakland by the hand in the form of Professor Wang Ya-Chun, a Chinese artist who came to New York to exhibit his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in 1948. Weakland acted as his interpreter. "Sometimes in life, fate and luck have a great deal to do with your accomplishments," says Weakland, smiling. She found herself returning to Ya-Chun's studio daily to watch him paint and to assist him with his work. Although she finished the course work for her doctorate, Weakland never began her thesis. "By that time I knew I would rather be an artist than a teacher," she explains. The rest, as they say, is history.

Weakland's monotypes demonstrate the push and pull of man and nature; the harmony and the struggle of being part of the earth yet attempting to control it. "In printing, you can achieve a subtlety that cannot be attained in painting," she reveals. Her images break the barriers of a confined surface, transcending both the culture and the images they are intended to portray.

In a statement about her 1988 show at the Standford University Museum of Art, she said, "There is such a wealth of resource for inspiration. I see, and am in awe of, a few basic things which are common to all men." To look at Weakland's work is to begin to understand that the role of an artist is to show the rest of us those things that we fail to see.

Weakland has exhibited her art extensively in the United States, Europe and Asia. She has always been interested in the people who purchase her pieces. "Selling my work is like having someone adopt a child." Her work is available through the Sharon Park Gallery in Menlo Park.

The paintings of Anna Wu Weakland will be displayed at Stanford University Art Gallery March 16 through April 4. While credited with infusing new, and individualized, life into the Oriental traditional mode of painting, Mrs. Weakland's methods are old and subtle. After attending Columbia, studying painting under Prof. Ya-Chun Wang, and teaching Chinese' painting at the China Institute in New York, she came to California and continued her work in the Stanford Art Department from 1953-55. Since then she has had several one-man exhibitions on the West Coast, in Hong Kong, England, and Canada.

Dr. Lorenz Eitner, head of the Stanford Art and Architecture Department, says of her work, "The painting of Anna Wu Weakland appears to me to represent a survival of tradition, not revival. They are Chinese painting, their debt to modern Western art seems to me small. "There is, on the other hand, a great deal of the conventional in them, in their themes, treatment and technique. This would damn them as Western art in the eyes of those to whom convention is anathema. "But to Mrs. Weakland, who is not a Western artist, these conventions are the raw matter from which she draws beauty and meaning, just as other artists use visual experience as material for art. "By drawing on tradition she restricts her freedom to 'create,' to use this inflationary word, but she gains in return the serenity and assurance which give to her work its particular appeal. "Nearly all the most vital art of the past 150 years has been anti-traditional. Our society has put artists under the obligation to be original, to be 'creative'; it expects each of them to invent his own artistic language. "The loss is irreparable. Tradition cannot be revived once it is dead, just as religion cannot be revived, and for the same reasons. There have been attempts, in our traditional century, to restore the folkways and beliefs of the national past, and with them old traditions of art. "These attempts in the West have always bogged down in manneristic anachronism, in 'kitsch' or worse. No wonder that we look with a kind of envv on those cultures, remote from our own, in which modernity seems to have preserved a link with the past, permitting the serious artist to express himself in a traditional or even popular idiom."