Don Li
Canada
DON LI was born in China and grew up among artists, singers, dancers, musicians, and writers. His own talent emerged at age 3 when he was seen scratching sketches of a rooster and duck in the dirt with a stick. Encouraged by others, he was given basic art supplies and began to draw daily. As a teenager, he took formal classes, and he would often ride his bicycle into the countryside for plein air outings with his classmates. Later, he was accepted into the Central Academy of Arts and Design where he learned painting and sculptural art.
Don’s subject matter includes portraiture and figurative art as well as landscapes, in media as varied as oils, acrylics, scratched board, color pencil, ink, and copper.
After he became a father, he found that children gave him new inspiration as an artist. He saw how children occupy their own emotional world of solitude and introspection, a sort of dreamland and soul world that artists themselves often try to escape into. It is that interior life that he seeks to convey through his art.
Don Li now live at Richmond Canada with his family, his painting major base at beautiful great Vancouver and Fraser Valley.
Don is enamoured with classical music. He thinks of music as paintings in fluid form and of paintings as music in crystallized form. As a painter, his goal is to lead the viewer into a world that is pure, peaceful, aesthetic and harmonious, the realism of poetic dreams.
* This statement has been provided directly by the artist in association to their 14th International ARC Salon entries. This content has not been edited for typos or grammatical errors and has not been vetted for accuracy.
