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| Full information about the artist |
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| First Name | Kristin Hua |
| Last Name | Yang |
| Born | 1970-05-08 |
| Country | South Africa |
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| Biography | |
I was born and grew up in Zibo, Shandong province, by the north coast of China, across the Yellow Sea from Korea. The name Shandong means "East of Mountains." The province consists of an inland zone and a peninsula, with plains and rocky hills. Two famous classical philosophers, Confucius and Mencius, were from Shandong; their ideas are still influential for Eastern civilization.
I grew up in a small family. My mother passed away ten yeas ago. My father is an oil painter by profession. My grandfather from my mothers side was a traditional Chinese brush painter by career. I think my decision to choose painting as my profession and my enjoyment of this art form come from this family tradition.
Three hundred kilometers east of Zibo is the famous harbour Qingdao (i.e. Tsingtao) by the Kiaochow Bay. It was my fathers birth place. This is the second largest city in the province. When I was 5-years old, I was taken by my father to visit my grandparents in Qingdao. This was my first visit to the sea. I still have the vague memory of asking my father a very naive question: shall we walk around the bay and get to the other side of the sea? It was difficult for a little girl to visualize the magnitude of such a large body of water. This was perhaps the origin of my lifetime longing for the ocean and curiosity for the unknown edges of the world. Many years later, I went to the Cape of Good Hope. I sent a postcard to my father telling him that I eventually reached the other side of the sea!
I was formally trained in the art of painting from the age of 15, under an education system which follows the French and Russian traditions. At that time, the emphasis is on life drawing and still-life drawing. This helped me to understand the structure, light contrast and the texture. I also studied colors according to the Impressionist principles. In 1989, I was fortunate enough to be admitted to the Central Academy of Fine Art. I had the chance to be in contact with some new thinkings and I was guided by some leading artists in China. Afterward, I returned to Zibo and took up a teaching post in art.
Just two months before the millennium, fate took me to South Africa, where I completed the MAFA degree at the University of Natal. For most Oriental people, Africa represents a primordial, pure and mysterious continent. The novelty of the land, habitants and animals are stimulation for me. The plants under the powerful sunlight injected me with much vigor and energy in creating new work. I explore various topics, such as figures, food, landscape, fish, forest, pear etc.
Needless to say, as a visual art, observation of the subjects is essential for creating paintings. However, observation need not be restricted to physical observation. Very often I make observation without even noticing it, it is a kind of unconscious observation, a kind of mental vision that goes beyond light waves and physics. For me, the aim of creating a painting is to produce an echo of my unconscious world in the viewers mind.
As an example, let me elaborate a bit on my recent fish paintings.
I like fish because they are creatures of free movements that I can identify with. I enjoy visiting aquariums and watching documentary films about the underwater. It is fascinating to observe their elegant postures in motion. One day if we can break the wall between we and the fish, we may even discover that they have rather sophisticated mind of their own. Sometime ago, my husband kept three fish tanks and he looked after them regularly. One day, while he was cleaning a tank, a little fish suddenly dashed up to the surface and used its mouth to give his finger a quick gentle touch, shortly before sinking back to the bottom and died. For us, in our memory, this is a farewell kiss from a sentimental being using up its final breath of life.
While painting a fish, I always imagine I am one of them. Whether they are real fish or just an image on the canvas, they are always genuine enough for me. This also applies to other subjects that I paint. I always identify myself with them. I try to become aware of the fishs happiness, anxiety, loneliness and playfulness in the water. I also feel their purity in the clear water, a kind of spiritual perfection and enlightening. However they are not entities in a big void, for there is forever a kind of self-awareness and self-importance in a fish. Maybe this is represented by the presence of the shadow accompanying a fish in some of my pictures. They are moreover austere beings traveling stubbornly in only one direction, tracing out a line, with no beginning and no end, in the vastness of the space under the water. As in the title of a Gauguin painting: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? Some of my friends commented that my paintings were influenced by Taoist thought. Someone told me in my exhibition that he could sense an Oriental culture background in my work. I am not conscious of any of these and I do not deliberately choose any oriental symbolism in my art, if there is any at all. For me, they represent stories to be told and understood through a kind of unexplained mutual communication. How I structure the painting and how I choose the sort of tones depends on my feeling and contact with these tiny creatures. In short, I am inspired by what I am about to paint.
Education:
1989 - 1991) Studying oil painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China
(1991 - 1999) Assistant Lecturer, Commercial Technical Secondary School of Zibo, China
(2001 - 2003) Awarded Postgraduate Diploma and MAFA from University of Natal (now University of KwaZulu-Natal), Pietermaritzburg, Souh Africa
Exhibitions:
(1990 - 1999) Taking part in numerous exhibitions in China
(2001) Solo art exhibition at Jack Heath Gallery, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa
(2004) Solo art exhibition at Tamasa Art Gallery, Durban, South Africa
(2006) Renault Artists Exhibitions, Paris, France, Port Elizabeth, Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
To view a collection of my artwork, visit http://kristinyang.com |
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