Chun Yan 瑃燕 China, 1980

Chun Yan’s watercolour paintings touch on a range of subject matters – complex notions of birth, life, death, illusion and reality.  Some works, however, are purely a celebration of artists she admires; she mimics the works of well-known artists such as Botero or Velazquez.  She has done a delightful series of ‘Infanta’ portraits, however, by leaving the faces of the portraits blank she gives her works an air of mystery and ambiguity.  The theme of time also plays an important role in her works with the scatterings of bones and bird skulls reminding us that however hard we try to outwit time, death comes to us all in the end.