About The Artist
The seed of art was planted during Young Li’s early teenage years in China, when she was often asked to design classroom bulletin boards. What began as a school task soon became a quiet passion, as she discovered the joy of bringing ideas to life through line, form, and color. Encouraged by her teachers’ praise, she nurtured that early spark with care and pride—even though art wasn’t seen as a serious path. She went on to study and teach Japanese in college, but the desire to create never left her.
It wasn’t until after relocating to the United States in the 1990s that Young Li began seriously studying oil painting with the art teacher at the private school where she taught in Connecticut. There, she also met a local landscape oil painter whose studio in Litchfield Center became a source of deep inspiration. Through frequent visits, close observation, and thoughtful conversations, she gained not only new techniques but also a way of seeing the painting object through an artist’s eye. These moments reawakened a long-held passion and marked the true beginning of her journey as a painter.
Since 2015, Young Li has scaled down her teaching duties to pursue art full-time. She is an oil painter focused on landscapes and a practitioner of traditional Chinese Gongbi (fine-line ink painting). As an artist, educator, and Chinese art trainer, she weaves together Eastern precision with Western expression. Her practice reflects a lifelong journey—cultivating a once-hidden seed into a deeply rooted expression.
About Young’s Art
Young Li is a painter whose life and work move between the United States and China. Trained in both Western oil painting and traditional Chinese Gongbi ink techniques, she creates art that bridges cultures—uniting two artistic lineages with a single brush. From the East, she draws spiritual depth and refined precision; from the West, freedom of form and boldness of color. Her work reflects the dual nature of her experience—rooted in two worlds, shaped by contrast and harmony. They are interwoven, nurturing each other and shaping the unique style of her artwork today. Each stroke becomes a meeting point between restraint and passion, tradition and individuality. With her brush as a bridge, she paints not only her own story, but a shared space for all who live between shores.
In recent years, Young’s drawn inspiration from the places I now call home: the drifting boats along the Charles River in Cambridge, the tranquil shores and lily ponds of Cape Cod, the arched bridges and still lotus blooms along Beijing’s Grand Canal, and the cheerful peonies blooming just outside my studio window. These landscapes live within me—and through my brush, they find new life on the canvas.
Young’s work is held in private collections in the United States, China, and Japan.
Statement
I am captivated by the beauty and mystery of the natural world—especially those fleeting, magical moments that unfold quietly around me. My brush follows the rhythm of my heart, always in pursuit of the scenes and landscapes that dwell within me. They emerge both from the place I now call home in the United States, and the land of China, where I was born and raised.
While my work is grounded in a realist tradition, I do not seek bold contrasts or dramatic clashes of color. Instead, I favor subtle gradations of light and shadow, delicate transitions between warm and cool tones, translucent layers of paint, and refined brushwork that softens contours and lines, rendering them gentle, hazy, and relaxed. This approach lends my paintings a restrained, lingering quality—infused with a sense of quietude and calm, evoking a mood and atmosphere of serenity and timeless stillness.
Whenever possible, I strive to begin my initial studies en plein air—drawing and laying the first washes of paint directly from nature—before returning to the studio to complete the work. Painting en plein air is an immersive experience where light, landscape, and moment converge. Inspiration strikes quickly, turning the process into a race against time. Each piece captures the urgency and emotion of that fleeting connection, telling its own unique story
My paintings are both footnotes to my lived experience and mirrors of my inner world. They are tranquil yet dynamic, harmonious yet quietly profound. Within them dwell both the smallest living beings and the vast, enduring grandeur of the natural world. In my search for landscapes that echo the one within my heart, my brush works tirelessly—driven by passion, and humbled by wonder.