"Beautiful and seductive, these landscapes contain, but only partially conceal, a visceral howl. My understanding of them fluctuates between seeing them as landscapes, then as abstractions, and finally again as landscapes."
- Ying Li
Grassy Waters, 24" x 30", Oil On Linen
There is a pathway that enables the artist to travel across time and space. This form of travel empowers an artist to create in the moment, to see with an alternative perspective, observe, and obtain insight from another dimension. I work in the zone where abstraction and representation meet, using high volumes of oil paint, bold colors, earthy textures, and calligraphic lines to depict landscape. Working from a deep engagement with the material and visual possibilities of painting, my goal is to convey a visceral connection with place.
My training in Chinese painting and calligraphy have helped me to form a brushwork that is both free and disciplined. Color is the core of my painting. I use it to convey mood and memory, and to express particular feelings and a sense of place and time.
This liberates and allows the retrieval of spiritual energy and connections associated with each place, with an inner reflection captured spontaneously on the canvas. The paint becomes a living and breathing entity between earth and sky, heaven and earth.
Night Window, 17" x 15", Oil On Canvas
Ying Li was born in Beijing, China, and graduated from Anhui Teachers University in 1977 before immigrating to the United States in 1983. Her numerous one-person exhibitions include those at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, Lohin Geduld Gallery, Elizabeth Harris Gallery, The Painter Center and Bowery Gallery (all New York City), and in college and university galleries at Dartmouth, Swarthmore, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, the College of Staten Island and the Big Town Gallery, Vermont. Her work has also appeared in numerous group exhibitions, including those at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The National Academy Museum, Tibor de Nagy Gallery, Lori Bookstein Fine Art, Kouros Gallery, and Hood Museum of Art.
She is the recipient of Henry Ward Ranger Fund Purchase Award, Edwin Palmer Memorial Prize for painting from the National Academy Museum, Donald Jay Gordon Visiting Artist and Lecturer, Swarthmore College, McMillian Stewart Visiting Critic, Maryland Institute College of Art and Artist-in-Residence, Dartmouth College. Her other Residential Fellowships include: Centro Incontri Umani Ascona, Switzerland; Valparaiso Foundation, Spain; Tilting Recreation and Cultural Society, Fogo Island, Newfoundland; and Chateau Rochefort-en-Terre, France. Li’s work has been reviewed in numerous publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art Forum, Art in America, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Sun, New York Press, Cover, Artcritical.com and Hyperallergic.com. Ying Li is Professor of Fine Arts and Department Chair, Haverford College, PA. (Courtesy: Painting Perceptions)
Cherry Blossom, 36" x 36", Oil On Linen
Photo: Painting Perceptions.com
Painting Perceptions Interview With Ying Li
2016
by Larry Groff
“My goal in painting is to capture nature, in both its toughness and vulnerability, and transmit all of its energy to the canvas. To this end I use intense colors, earthy textures and calligraphic lines, working in the zone where abstraction and representation shade into each other. My interests and training in Chinese painting and calligraphy lead me to a brushwork that is at once free and disciplined.
Color lies at the core of my painting process. I use it to convey mood and memory, and to express a particular sense of place and time. In my painting, color, line and plane interact, pushing each other until they reach a harmony, a unity. Like a jazz musician, I hear the lines of saxophone, bass and drums, each improvising in response to the others, swinging the piece forward. If and when these responses reach their climax, the painting is done.” - Ying Li, 2015
Women have been the cornerstone of operations and exhibitions at Gross McCleaf since Estelle Shane Gross opened her gallery in 1970 on the second floor of 1713 Walnut Street. Over 50 years later, Gross McCleaf is commemorating its rich history during (re)Focus 2024, a citywide festival celebrating women-identified and BIPOC artists.
Fortitude at 50: A Resilient Five Decades at Gross McCleaf Gallery features Martha Armstrong, Jan Baltzell, Joan Becker, Elizabeth Geiger, Eileen Goodman, Penelope Harris, Heidi Leitzke, Bertha Leonard, Ying Li, Ann Lofquist, Chelsey Luster, Bethann Parker, Nicole Parker, Jane Piper, Kimi Pryor, Mary Putman, Celia Reisman, Val Rossman, Mickayel Thurin, Leigh Werrell, and Lauren Whearty with self-portraits, dreamy narratives and formally complex still-life and landscape paintings. The works suggest a deep reflection of the self and a strong point of view conveyed through their distinct subjects and styles. The exhibition represents women artists in all stages of their careers who have helped shape the Gross McCleaf legacy and brand focus toward what Sharon Ewing, former owner and director, refers to as “painterly realism” – representation in painted form.
“I believe artists must make space for pleasure in painting, both in the act of painting and in the pleasure of viewing it.”
-Lauren Whearty
In her first solo exhibition with Gross McCleaf Gallery, titled Painter’s Table, Lauren Whearty celebrates cheerful color and playful patterns in a contemporary take on the artistic tradition of still life painting. With a keen eye for possibilities within this genre, Whearty embraces a feminist perspective, using everyday objects as building blocks to create her own distinctive universe. Each item she incorporates becomes a referential exploration of art history and the process of image creation, adding depth and meaning to her work.
Long before recorded history, humans identified divinity in the natural world. Across the globe, cave paintings and petroglyphs represent the land, the animals and the supernatural. Prehistoric burial mounds and henges of Northern Europe align with equinoxes and solstices. At Newgrange in Ireland, decorated stone carvings record the phases of the moon and depict rays emerging over the horizon at sunrise. Contemporary viewers can only infer the exact meanings of these monumental relics, etched with waves, spirals and diamonds juxtaposed with recognizable imagery.
As contemporary innovation, architecture, technology and design increasingly position each person as the master of their own exclusive universe, the artists in Concerning The Spiritual In Landscape have humbly venerated the life-giving light, ever-present matter and perpetual cycles of nature that bring forth all things.
“Landscape is indeed an inspiring subject to someone who values surprise, change, nuance, and natural processes. Landscapes are intrinsically creative forces. First, they evolve as complex systems from the interactions of geologic, biotic, and climatic forces over time. Then, when experienced as subjective witnesses, landscapes offer a light unique to that moment. The observer sees not just with her eyes but with layers of knowledge, familiarity, emotions, and, most crucially, curiosity.”
-Thomas Paquette
On Nature features over thirty new landscape paintings from Gross McCleaf artist, environmentalist, and explorer, Thomas Paquette. Brilliant arrays of color depict lush terrain, hazy mountains, rushing rivers, and panoramic vistas, where subtle and sensitive details in light and atmosphere are perfectly captured.
“I have a longing for a certain beauty that’s hard to describe, but it’s usually associated with summer colors. My desire for this summertime feeling seems inexhaustible, and though I’ve been trying for many years, I don’t feel like I am ever really satisfied.”
- Kurt Moyer
For over a decade, Kurt Moyer’s work has combined his love of nature with his reverence for art history. Born in Southeastern Pennsylvania, Moyer spent much of his youth exploring the Barnes Collection in Merion, Pennsylvania. Moyer now resides in rural New York near Rochester where he spends his time plein air painting from the beginning of spring until late fall. These passions converge in Moyer’s new abstract paintings on view at Gross McCleaf...
I went to see the de Kooning Retrospective at the Whitney Museum in the Fall of 1983, just weeks after I arrived in New York City from China. I had vaguely heard of his name and had never seen his work, even in reproduction.
I remember clearly the moment I stepped into the first gallery, where the show started, as I faced this wall filled with huge canvases. I felt like I was hit by lightning and landed on the moon, I was in a different world. There were figures, supposedly female, painted fiercely with thick, juicy paint.
If Ying Li’s paint application suggests a furious restlessness, her work has been, for many years, no less unsettled in terms of geography. Over the years, the artist’s motifs have included landscapes in France, Spain, Ireland, Italy, and Switzerland, and – on this side of the Atlantic – Newfoundland, Maine, the Colorado Rockies, and upstate New York, as well as New York City.
What to do when a pandemic freezes travel world-wide?
“In early March 2020, Haverford College, like educational institutions throughout the country, closed its campus to visitors and moved classes online in order to mitigate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the months that followed, Ying Li, the Phlyssa Koshland professor in Fine Arts at Haverford, responded to the crisis with astonishing and prolific creativity. Comprising 47 paintings created in just five months, Blossoms in a Sudden Strangeness reflects a profound aesthetic discipline. Li began each painting through closely observing subjects she discovered in or near her apartment on Haverford’s campus, such as the view from her porch or cherry trees in bloom. Responding to beauty and ephemerality in nature, she abstracts and reworks each composition until her expressive gestures and densely layered surfaces convey the complexity of her observations over time. Reveling in possibility, she adds, spreads, and scrapes away paint, creating relief-like topographies. Amid the ‘sudden strangeness’ of the pandemic, Li was fortunate to safely remain on campus, taking inspiration from flora and fauna that have fascinated her for more than 25 years...
Rocks, Trees, and Gardens: Paintings by Lois Dodd and Ying Li will open this Saturday and Sunday, July 10-11 from 1-5 pm, at Rosy End Post, 18 South Street, Greenport, NY. The exhibition will run for three weekends, through July 24-25.
Lois and Ying long have focused their paintings on the natural world. Close friends, they occasionally have journeyed together to paint side by side. During long careers, each artist has developed a style of painting that is uniquely her own, but their styles could hardly be more different. This show is an opportunity to see the work of two painters who use paint in radically different ways.
Gross McCleaf Gallery is pleased to announce two solo exhibitions of new paintings by gallery artists, Natasha Das and Max Mason and a collection of mini exhibitions, featuring the work of Giovanni Casadei, Rhea Cutillo, Ying Li, Scott Noel, Thomas Paquette, Jeffrey Reed and Val Rossman.
Textures created with thread are to Natasha Das what brushstrokes are for other artists: fundamental, visceral, expressive elements. Das’ labor-intensive compositions convey her unique voice by representing an engagement with both abstraction and the weaving tradition of her native India, lending an autobiographical component to her work. . .
