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Hello, I purchased this little painting a few years ago at an estate sale in northern Oregon area, I am not good at being able to identify which country particular caligraphy styles come from so i really need some help here with this very nice little painting. It is done on artist board with a gold foil seal along edge and silver foil flecks on back, the frame is 100% hand made. Can anyone help me with identification or at least let me know if it is Japanese or Chinese so I know which direction to look in. Thanks for your time;)

The cards with the gold edge are typically Japanese, and are often used for paintings or calligraphy as a small gifts or thank-you gesture.

The frame is also quite typically Japanese in its design and finish.

The artist's name is a bit hard to read. I will come back to it later.

I just received a reply from a Chinese translator that says the name of artist is Heren?, and the painting is named Dong Chi? I am now very confused? She says the town is in June Province Qichun County
Hubei Province.

I think that your translator friend is misreading a Japanese inscription and seal as if it was Chinese. She has given you Chinese pronunciation for the characters. In Japanese they will be different. The seal and inscription are most likely different names that the artist uses.

Also I am skeptical that the first character of the inscription is 东 as she suggests. I suspect instead that it is a stylized variant of a different character that is here written in cursive and not easy to figure out. Botan is probably the only other contributor here besides Mikeoz who has the ability to do so, but this is vintage decorative work, not fine art. It's a bit of a needle in a haystack.

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