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Chinese canadian contemporary artist

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Nomadic roots

An overview thus far

Tall monochrome ink painting with a dark, gnarled trunk rising into misty, folded washes.

Night harbour scene with a wooden boat, bright cabin light, and distant boats flickering through mist.

Horizontal abstraction; two black crags face a V-shaped void, with teal and rust pools glowing within.

Wide ink-and-colour scroll of abstracted mountains and water, streaked with turquoise and rust

Broad ink wash with a low dark ridge mirrored in soft water-like tones

Red double-decker bus tilting into a curve, crowds on both sides, buildings in blue-gray haze.

Vertical abstraction; dense central black mass on ivory, traced by fine chalk-like lines

Square black-and-white ink work; a dense vertical-horizontal pillar of bold strokes fills the center, surrounded by soft gray washes and brushed echoes; calligraphic notes and two red seals on the right.

Pale ground with thick, tar-like black strokes arranged in loose verticals, glossy and textural.

Horizontally split mixed-media field with a dense black spiral over pale, textured surfaces and a short column of characters at right.

A white-shirted figure with a blank mask confronts a Peking Opera warrior; a horizontal tear crosses the canvas

Centered, layered red triangle over dark angular planes; zipper-like ridges suggest a border.

Green-ochre landscape-like field cleaved by a white V-opening lined with a short zipper.

Narrow, gray ink work with a central tree-like spine surrounded by misty washes.

Black ground with a diagonal burst of white surf, a red panel with poured wave, and a mounted driftwood element.

Shu xiang

Script image

Four-character vertical inscription in disciplined yet expressive brushwork on white ground. Strokes are fluid and confident, moving between classical calligraphic structure and personal gesture. The composition breathes — characters spaced with intention, the white ground as active as the ink.

Densely composed ink on paper featuring deconstructed Chinese characters rendered in bold, varying brushstrokes. Characters are legible yet abstracted, pushed toward symbol and totem through exaggeration and spatial tension. Dry and wet ink coexist across a white ground, each form standing as an autonomous unit in dialogue with its neighbours.

Large-scale work on canvas with vertical columnar clusters of heavily worked black marks on a warm ivory ground. Characters mutate toward figuration — human forms, creatures, and glyphs emerge and dissolve within dense, layered strokes. The material weight is physical and immediate, the surface carrying the full force of repeated gestural contact

Ink on paper featuring four large deconstructed Chinese characters arranged in a loose two-by-two grid on white ground. Strokes are bold and spontaneous, blending seal script solidity with expressive gestural freedom. Each character carries totemic weight while remaining spatially open

Tall vertical format ink work with two columns of heavily worked characters on a dark, smoke-saturated ground. The ink bleeds and blooms at the edges, giving the text the quality of an inscription emerging from or being consumed by darkness. Tension between legibility and dissolution is central

Vertical ink and mixed media composition dominated by a dark pyramidal or mountain form rising from the lower field. A pale grey orb floats upper left. Red accents punctuate the black mass. The work reads simultaneously as landscape, monument, and abstracted figure — elemental and austere

Two large Chinese characters rendered in wet, explosive brushwork against white ground, surrounded by ink splatter and bloom. The marks are simultaneously calligraphic and gestural, the characters caught mid-dissolution between script and pure energy field.

POST IMAGERY

HOU YIXIANG AND BEYOND

: Ceramic tile mural in a three-by-four grid format. A dynamic figurative composition depicts a muscular figure in motion, arms raised, set against golden-green earth tones. A reclining figure with teal drapery occupies the upper panel. The tiled seams become part of the formal structure.

Abstract mixed media work in golds, umbers, and muted greens with a ghostly face emerging from geometric colour planes. The surface is heavily worked — scraped, layered, and textured. Figurative and abstract registers coexist without resolution, the face neither fully present nor absent

Narrow vertical mixed media work with horizontal banding in silvers, greys, and a central band of dark rust and earth tones. The surface has an industrial, archaeological quality — layered like sediment or stripped wall. Small dark forms punctuate the central band like embedded objects or fossils

Charcoal and mixed media work in greys and black on textured ground. Ambiguous forms — part figure, part landscape, part shadow — emerge from a swirling mid-tone field. The surface has a granular, atmospheric quality, light and dark trading dominance across the composition.

Oil painting of two dancing figures rendered in expressionist style against a grey-green architectural ground. One figure in dark greens, one in warm bronze and blue — both mid-gesture, bodies caught in joyful or combative motion. The paint is thick, direct, and confident.

Large horizontal mixed media painting in deep browns and blacks with a stark geometric interruption — a bright triangular opening reveals a pale, luminous seascape with wooden pilings and low sun. Dark sculptural forms flank the right edge. The work stages a collision between murk and sudden clarity, enclosure and open horizon.

Richly textured mixed media work in warm ochres, reds, and blacks. Animal or mythological forms emerge from layered paint and material buildup, the surface cracked and aged like excavated pigment. Primal energy dominates — part cave painting, part expressionist canvas

Mixed media painting in saturated yellows and greens with fragmented figurative forms — a face, bird-like shapes, and gestural marks layered into a dense, luminous field. Eastern and Western visual vocabularies collide within a single compressed pictorial space.

Vertical mixed media composition in deep greens and burgundy. Organic forms — suggesting roots, torsos, or geological strata — push through vertical white striations that read as birch trunks or structural fractures. The red form at upper centre pulses like a wound or a bloom.

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© 2025 by YongSheng Xuan

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