Ying Li paints out of doors most of the time, but her work is not what comes to mind when one thinks of “en plein air” painting. Historically, the plein air approach was fundamental to the esthetic of the Impressionist painters of the 19th century. It embraced the unpredictability of painting in an uncontrolled environment and it also promoted a light and airy style of depicting nature. In comparison, Li’s painting style leans towards Abstract Expressionism and a muscular painting style. She exhibits an exultant love of paint and applies it thickly and lushly.
Li cites music, and jazz in particular, as a major influence on her work. Like jazz, her process embraces serendipity and improvisation. The constantly shifting light, the random nature of sounds outdoors (traffic, birdsong, a cough) play into her artistic practice and become part of the work itself. Li explains that in Chinese philosophy people are not outside observers of nature, but rather, are a crucial and integral component of the natural world.
There is a rhythm to Last Stroke of Fall; a syncopation in the brilliant red slashes of paint. It was painted along the banks of the Gihon River in Johnson, Vermont on a windy cold day in late October. The impulse might be to translate the bold marks as falling red leaves, but these painterly notes seem more to explode upward as a statement of pure color and energy. This intense immediacy is a dynamic way to describe the glory of autumn in New England.
Ying Li is the Phlyssa Koshland Professor of Fine Arts at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. She shows extensively in New York City, throughout New England, and abroad. Her work is in the collections of the Library of Congress, the National Academy Museum, and the Hood Museum, to name a few. She has an upcoming show entitled Blossoms in the Time of Coronliness at The Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery Haverford College September–October 2020. Li’s work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art Forum, Art in America, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.