Art Sync: Big Ball of Energy

YL: I don’t decide what’s in and what’s out. Fundamentally, it’s about paint and using it to say what I have to say.

There are so many revisions during the process, things come and go, and I try to ride with it and to find structure through the chaos. I think a lot about scale and how the scale of forms and the scale of marks relate to the painting as a whole. If I get the scale and the precision of color nailed, I’m happy.

Realism and abstraction are not that different to me. A good painting has both. Think of Mondrian and what he searched for throughout his life. There is so much embedded in his late abstractions.

EJ: John Yau (Hyperallergic, "Ying Li's Ecstatic Landscapes") asks an interesting question:

"Li is free of the baggage associated with thick gestural painting. How had she arrived at a place that was not at all nostalgic for the past, or mannered in its gestures?"

As an answer, he suggests that your oil paintings are built on your ink wash painting and calligraphy background. Struggling keeps artists engaged, in fact your entire approach to painting seems to be a pitched battle with material. It doesn't look to me like you worry about making "mannered gestures," but would you say you try to avoid repeating yourself?

YL: I don’t think about gestural painting when I work. The gesture and texture come out of searching for the image and structure, and making sense of what I am looking at. I think about color, structure, and scale. It’s not about style. I realize that every place has its unique character, spirit, color, texture, mood, and atmosphere and if I respect what I see I will not repeat myself.

EJ: What attracts you to places or subjects you might paint?

YL: I don’t look specifically for subjects to paint. Most of the time they just show up. I don’t work from photos. I need the chaos and energy of the real world to get me engaged, not a distilled 2-D image.

EJ: How do you prepare? Do you premix color or mix on site? Do you start outside and finish in the studio? Do you always give yourself a subject to work from? Do you ever work from imagination?

YL: Each painting starts differently. I love to travel, to see places, an opportunity I didn’t have when I was in China. I want to see the world!

YL: I buy pre-stretched canvas/linen, the strongest I can find. I haven’t stretched canvas for years, trying to save my wrists and hands for painting. I prime a couple of extra layers of gesso to make it stronger. I hardly use any medium, never dryers. I try to keep the materials pure and simple. It’s amazing how durable and versatile oil paint and linen/canvas are. Centuries of experience and practice has proven this.

As far as drying time, it takes as long as needed, like fine wine.

EJ: I think of working in clay or with caulk when I look at your paintings, since you slather on thick ribbons and chunks of color, smearing and digging to expose chance patterns or incidents. Do you randomly work back into certain areas, relying on chance, or do you recall where certain lodes of color lie? What tools do you use besides brushes and palette knives? Do you more often scrape off over-mixed or "muddy" areas of paint or seek to leverage duller colors?

EJ: If you are looking at several things situated in landscape, and that particular corner of the world is your subject, does the "flow (emanation)" feel different than when you look at a single subject such as a tree? (This may have some connection to why you used two panels to make Blossoming.)

YL: In a way they are not much different. A tree is by itself is a universe. It contains enormous energy. Branch ‘A’ to branch ‘B’ can feel miles apart. It is sort of like reading Haiku–it brings you closer to and inside the subject. Suddenly every little thing-–a rock, a blade of grass–becomes enormous, just like a few trees in a corner can form a world. It all depends on how the artist wants to see it.

There is a saying, that "to paint the mountain is like painting a nude, and painting the human figure is like painting rocky mountains."

EJ: I'm struck by strong horizon lines in Ballycastle (After Rain) and Chasin’ Rainbow (Green). Many of your pieces evoke deep landscape without showing the horizon. Why did you include horizons here?

YL: The landscapes in North Mayo (Ireland) are very romantic. I was imagining what it would look like if I was in the air floating with the clouds. Wet paint can do magic––yes, absolutely, perspective is important to these two paintings.

I think about color all the time: how I can get the whole range of colors to work together, the muddy, the clear, the local colors and primaries, the transparencies, and the thick blobs. Colors can look very different in varying textures and create very different sensations and feelings. Color is a personal thing. There is so much you can play with in landscape painting. Any colors can be in the game, not just the 'landscape color set’ sold in art stores.

Ying Li: Weather Report

Nov 15 – Dec 21, 2024 at Gross McCleaf Gallery | Sept 6 – Oct 11, 2024 at Haverford College, Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery

Ying Li is an American painter and art educator, born in Beijing, China, immigrated to the United States in 1983. She is the Phlyssa Koshland Professor of Fine Arts at Haverford College. BFA Anhui Normal University, China 1977, MFA Parsons School of Design, 1987.

Li’s work is represented by Pamela Salisbury Gallery in Hudson, NY; Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia, Alice Gauvin Projects in Washington, D.C. and Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden in Dallas, Texas.

Her work has been featured internationally in Centro Incontri Umani Ascona, Swizterland; ISA Gallery, Italy; Enterprise Gallery, Ireland; Museum of Rocheforten-Terre, France; American Academy of Arts and Letters, The National Academy Museum, The Hood Museum, NH; James Michener Art Museum PA; The Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, VA; The Aspen Institute, CO; Chautauqua Institution, NY; Timucuan Ecological & Historic Preserve, FL; New York Studio School, Lohin Geduld Gallery, Elizabeth Harris Gallery, Lori Bookstein Projects, Tibor De Nagy Gallery, all in New York City; Gross McCleaf Gallery and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

She was the recipient of Edwin Palmer Memorial Prize and Henry Ward Ranger Fund Purchase Award both from National Academy NYC; Donald Jay Gordon Visiting Artist and Lecturer, Swarthmore College; Artist-in-Residence, Dartmouth College; the McMillan Stewart Visiting Critic, Maryland Institute College of Art; Ruth Mayo Distinguished Visiting Artist, The University of Tulsa; Visiting Artist, American Academy in Rome; Ballinglen Foundation Fellowship, 2024; Fraces Niederer Artist-in-Residence, as well as the recipient of various Residential Fellowships in Switzerland, Spain, Ireland, France and Ireland, and at Kingsley Plantation, Timucuan Ecological & Historic Preserve, FL.

Li’s works has been reviewed in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Artforum, Art in America, New York Sun, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Hyperallergic, artcritical, and The Washington Post, among others.