"Happy Birthday, Mr. President!" Painting

I’ve always found people fascinating; thus painting them is a wonderful, meaningful undertaking. If we have sincere conversations with people—and really listen to what they have to say—they will tell us things that are incredibly entertaining or inspiring. We might even feel enriched and awakened.

I want to create art that everyone can intuitively find beautiful and memorable. Like creating a delicate dessert that amazes with its blissful sugar rush, this experience is meant to be as gratifying to you as it is to me. We can never have enough art; for those who have never tasted it, it is a luxury...but for those who have, it is a necessity.

My own story began in China, where I grew up in an impoverished family. I was always good at drawing and enjoyed talking to girls. I noticed when I showed them my drawings that they became really interested in talking to me. At that time, art was not considered a practical career path, and I wasn’t particularly keen on studying. However, to keep me out of trouble, my mother sent me to an art academy in middle school. In college, I was in the fashion design program. After many attempts, I finally convinced my father to send me to Austria to advance my education, during a period when China’s economy was liberalized and finally improving.

I was young and restless though, and watching my friends back home forming business careers left me feeling as though I needed to follow their lead, so I wouldn’t miss out or fall behind. I quit my stint in Austria after only a few months, and returned home to China, where I ventured into a nearly unknown field: advertising. As a typical young entrepreneurial high roller, I also found my future wife in the office, and eventually, we made it through the jungle and found ourselves in Canada.

A couple of years after, I was diagnosed with leukemia; death looked me in the eye and I stared back, refusing to give up. To me, even being dealt a bad hand was still better than not getting a seat at the table. Fortunately, a bone marrow match was found and I pulled through. All the friends I made in the chemo treatment centre—with whom I fought the battle day in and day out— were not so lucky, however. One by one they fell, and I was the last man standing.

During those dark days, my concept of time transformed to something non-linear, plastic, and strange.