Anna Ning Fine Art is delighted to announce its forthcoming solo exhibition of paintings by the renowned Chinese artist Ye Yongqing. The exhibition will be a retrospective of Ye Yongqing’s work from the past 30 years. When Picasso wrote “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary”, he did not mean that art recorded a catalogue of events; rather that art was his way of expressing his feelings about life and the nature of life itself. Ye Yongqing (b. 1958), one of the most prominent figures in contemporary Chinese art, has a similar philosophy and approach to art and life. Ye Yongqing is perhaps best known for his bird paintings, which he began in 2000. These are executed in a quirky style featuring scratched black lines using the traditional medium of Chinese brush and ink on rice paper. Some paintings are very large, and are achieved by using a projector to beam simple sketches of birds in the artist’s notebook onto canvas or paper. Then he traces the enlarged shapes using a thin brush to draw abstract lines. At first sight, one might say that Ye Yongqing’s birds look like childish scribbles, lacking in refined skill; yet on closer examination they turn out to be very delicateand beautiful. In the 1990s, after traveling to the USA and Europe, he made collages that assembled images of trivial daily life – bird cages, light bulbs, pipes, cars, old photographs, caricatures – drawing them in the casual manner of Chinese literati artists. These paintings were divided into sections like a big cartoon describing his life with his own language and icons. He wrote, “I often see my life as like that of a migratory bird moving among several different cities, fragmented and with no fixed abode. I paint and put together my creations the same way.” The bird has become Ye Yongqing’s personal form of symbolic expression, a reflection of his spirit and emotions. By using the medium of traditional Chinese brush and ink but with a detached sense of freedom from literati paintings, Ye Yongqing seems to revive his life and spirit in his bird paintings – as a painter as free as a bird.