Born in the Tonghua City, Jilin Province, People's Republic of China, Nanfei is
a trained artist with a fine arts degree from Northeast Normal University, Changchun,
Jilin, and a MFA in painting, drawing and sculpture from the University of North
Texas in Denton, Texas.
She has been painting since she was 5 years old when a family friend bought her
an item she had pointed to in a store. What she thought was red wrapping of candy
turned out to be watercolour paint. The friend bought the red colour and all other
basic colours, along with a paint brush.
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art statement
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My artwork is guided by my interest in everyday human relationships and human reactions.
It’s about myself, my center. It’s about the environment I find around me, and who
I am. I think constantly about the events in my life, places I have been to and
the people I have known. Images of beautiful and ugly things play over and over
again in my mind just like a movie or pages from a diary.
My works are grounded in a perspective of my individual being as it is affected
by my relationships to the environments I find myself in and the people I find myself
among. This includes my being a female Chinese artist in China and the United States
of America.
My works are based on sociological and anthropological approaches as revealed in
my work. Basic myths and stories are found everywhere in all cultures, and I have
found them in the Chinese and U.S. cultures I have experienced. But I also believe
people have individual identities, essential cores of personality, and I try to
reveal these in my paintings. I often capture aspects of relationships of which
my subjects may not be aware. In my work I combine my analyses of their interactions
with a broad acceptance of the subjects’ depths of human emotions. I paint others
as distinct individuals, in poses that are natural to them. This involves their
social standing, what has happened in their lives, and aspects of their character.
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