MOUNTAIN LIFE - Coast Mountains | Winter / Spring 2018

WINTER/SPRING 2018 MLCM 59 ARTIST PROFILE LAN YAO words :: Kieran Brownie Art has always been a grounding force for Lan Yao. For the first eight and a half years of her life, Lan lived in Beijing, China, where the rigid communist government largely controlled the actions of its citizens. Art offered an escape. In Beijing, everything was so manicured. School children would march home after school in organized lines emanating outward from the school to their respective neighbourhoods. Stepping in unison down concrete streets, Lan recalls passing small squares of green grass guarded by signs saying, “Stay off! You will be fined.” “I would sit for hours,” Lan says. “I had to study every subject, every day. It looked like I was doing homework but I really wasn’t.” She laughs. “I used to just draw creatures all the time, on the edges of my notebooks. I drew these numbers that were also people, and they kind of hung out with one another… Breaking the rules without breaking the rules… Anarchy sitting still.” With a stressful school system and strict parents with high expectations, Lan says her salvation came when her parents enrolled her in traditional Chinese watercolour painting. “I’m really glad they put me in,” she says. “Even though it has a lot of rules, the one thing it teaches you is to be very free with your line flow. It was the only class I felt free to move.” Chinese watercolour is an artform where the actual physical movement of the arm is expressed in the painting. “The feeling of the line is part of the painting. This style is still in my work, I always start with a wash, and line flow is very important to me. I love Rodin for this, even though he is known as a sculptor, he has the ability to translate feeling and motion into a simple line. Leaving it open to interpretation.” Free to move. Lan Yao at work in Squamish. KIERAN BROWNIE