Biography
Born in Beijing, China, Ying Li studied painting at Anhui Teachers University (1974-77) where she taught 1977-83. She immigrated to the United States in1983 and received an MFA from Parsons School of Design, NY in 1987.
She is Professor of Fine Arts and Department Chair, Haverford College. She is represented by Lohin Geduld Gallery, NY.
Selected One Person Exhibitions
Lohin Geduld Gallery, NY; Elisabeth Harris Gallery, NY; The Painter Center, NY; Bowery Gallery, NY; Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford College, PA; List Gallery, Swarthmore College, PA; Marie Salant Neuberger Campus Center Gallery, Bryn Mawr College, PA; Tompkins College Center Gallery, Cedar Crest College, PA; Enterprise House, County Mayo, Ireland and ISA Gallery, Umbria, Italy.
Selected Group Exhibitions
American Academy of Arts and Letters, NY; The National Academy Museum, NY; Tibor de Nagy Gallery, NY; Lori Bookstein Fine Arts, NY; Chris Neptune Fine Arts, NY; Korous Gallery, NY; Denise Bibro Gallery, NY; Westbeth Gallery, NY; Greenhut Gallery, Portland, Maine; Pennsylvania Academy of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Hermitage Foundation Museum, VA; Fine Art Museum, Western Carolina University, NC; Gross-McLeaf Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; Pennsylvania College of Art & Design, Lancaster, PA; Logan Gallery, Chautauqua Institute, Chautauqua, NY, and the Museum of Rochefort-en-Terre, Brittany, France.
Selected Awards
Donald Jay Gordon Visiting Artist and Lecturer, Swarthmore College; Henry Ward Ranger Fund Purchase Award, Edwin Palmer Memorial Prize for painting and Certificate of Merit, all from the National Academy Museum, New York; Valparaiso Foundation Fellowship; Kahn-Mason Foundation Grant; Heliker–LaHotan Foundation Fellowship: two Vermont Studio Center fellowships; Enterprise House Art Colony Fellowship, Ireland; Artist Residency, Rochefort-en-Terre, France; Aspen Institute Scholarship; Lindback Faculty Research Grant.
Selected Publications
Li’s work has been reviewed in New York Times, The New Yorker, Art Forum, Art in America, The New York Sun, New York Press, Art Cricital.com, Abstract Art on Line, Cover, Morbihan France; The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Ying Li works in the zone where abstraction and representation shade off into each other, using bold colors, earthy textures, and calligraphic lines. Her training in Chinese painting and calligraphy helps her to form a brushwork that is both free and disciplined. Color is the core of her painting. She uses it to convey mood and memory and to express particular feelings and a sense of place and time.
Her work has been summarized by the New York art critic and curator David Cohen:
"She has a touch to die for in terms of bravura painthandling and innate good taste. In her best works, she manages to endow brushstroke with the power of metaphor. Different brushes and their tips sometimes converge in a single canvas in a Dionysian orgy of painterliness . . . Ms. Li’s best paintings pulsate with emotional and pictorial complexity."