MAPLE'S
BIO
Maple
(Yang Feng Bai) was born in the ancient city of Jiange in
China’s Sichuan Province in the southwest of China
near Tibet. The youngest of three sisters, her father was
the manager of a local rice wine factory and her mother,
a front desk clerk at a local hotel. At the age of 5 her
14-year old,
next older sister began teaching her how to draw.
Maple
took to it immediately, drawing everything in site: landscapes,
portraits, and particularly women in fashionable dresses.
She was drawn to their faces, hair, and styles, both modern
and traditional, learning the latter from books on Chinese
opera. Maple took to writing as well. Telling stories in
Putonghua about her life in Jiange, her family, friends,
and neighbors.
At
16 Maple went to a college two hours away in Guang Yuan.
She majored in English and continued her writing and drawing.
But four years later, when she moved to Beijing to get an
advanced English degree, Maple gave up most of her writing
to focus on painting. “I’m strong. I have very
rich ideas I think. I discovered I could not express them
in words. Words were too small. Only in painting could I
express the big things in my heart.”
While
in Beijing Maple met an older student, a painter of abstracts.
She became his assistant and learned new abstract techniques
in water colors, acrylics, and oil. Slowly Maple moved away
from realism to abstracts while continuing her studies.
In 2004
Maple moved to Shanghai. For the first two years she worked
in art galleries, learning more from each exhibition, while
continuing to explore, refine, and develop her style. After
encouragement from friends, Maple decided to strike out
on her own to work full-time as a painter. First working
out of a studio in western Shanghai and now near downtown
Puxi.
Since
2006 Maple has supported herself entirely from her work,
holding exhibitions two or three times a year in her studio
for a growing list of fans inspired by her work.
