Andy Chen
Andy Chen moved with his family to Calgary from Guangzhou, China in 1992. With a strong background in art and design, Andy was able to leverage his experience to build a career in remodelling homes in Calgary. Although the job is much more laborious than his previous job as a commercial product designer he is happy to find Calgary a place to call home. Since moving he has been active in the Calgary Chinese community, from teaching art classes at the Calgary Cultural Centre to designing and creating the Annual Stampede Parade float. He has looked for creative outlets in many different aspects of his life. He also continues to paint because he is inspired by the Canadian Rockies, even though life gets busier and busier by the day. He loves life with art in it and he vows to keep his creative spirits alive through constant engagement with other artist and the Calgary arts community.
Kwan Mei Leung
Kwan Mei Leung was born and raised in Hong Kong where she studied Chinese Arts in many forms for over 10 years. She is a self-taught painter and never attended any formal art schools. She immigrated to Canada in 1990 with her family and began her life in Calgary. While art is Kwan Mei’s true passion, she doubles as a registered dental assistant by day. She’s worked in this role for over 20 years and has built a life in Calgary with this career, but when you walk into her house you know she’s an artist at heart. With Chinese paintings hung on her walls and Chinese Zithers in her den, her entire home seems like an art studio.
When she came to Canada, she started studying art under Dillon Huang, a fellow Calgary artist. In the last 30 years, oil painting has become her lifelong passion because of the inherent mystery in the color relations; every mixed color is unique and can’t be reproduced. She paints portraits, still life, and landscapes, finding particular inspiration from the Rockies. For her, painting goes beyond mimicry of surface perceptions and the expression of the artist’s feelings can reveal the true essence of the subject.
Dillon Huang
Dillon Huang has lived in Calgary Alberta, Canada for over 30 years and being born and raised in China, he's had the opportunity to be educated in both Western and Eastern cultures. In his works, he believes in integrating the two to create a fusion of the two influences. He says that the East taught him his techniques, and the West enhanced his creativity. The artist is inspired by simplified beauty that usually comes unnoticed and ignored.
The artist has been strongly drawn to the Canadian Rockies from his first sight of them on his airplane ride over from China in 1982. His inspirations have since shifted to European landscape, as he felt that it was important to understand where the masters of impressionism found their love for art. He now feels that it’s time to reacquaint himself with the Canadian Rockies. To do this, Dillon has pledged the devotion of 10+ years to paint a collection that will be monumental to his career as an artist.
Feng Rui Yue
Feng Rui Yue is an active oil painter who has lived in Calgary for over 20 years. Prior to immigrating to Canada, he was a thriving young artist living in Yunnan China. Even though he was faced with the challenges of conflicting priorities, he maintained his interest and diligence in painting throughout his new life in Canada. He has learned through the years that he needs art to be a part of his life. He is continuously inspired by Calgary and its beautiful surroundings and aims to capture its essence in his future pieces.
Linda Chan
Linda Chan was born in 1947, in Guangzhou, China. Her childhood in a rural village while simple, was significant in shaping her artistic world view. Catching dragonflies, tadpoles, frogs and fish, and mucking about in fields and streams gave her an early appreciation of nature’s gifts. The freedom to run about until dusk was short lived, however, when it was deemed necessary to join the rest of her family in Hong Kong. After a harrowing afternoon at a beauty salon (hooked up to electric curlers!) in order to look like a city kid, the country mouse had to learn to become a city mouse. She stayed in the bustle of Hong Kong until she immigrated to Canada in 1967.
Although interested in art at a young age, she did not actively study art until after marriage and having children in 1984, when she began to learn Chinese watercolor painting from local artists. She never did formal schooling in art and is predominantly self-taught. She would attend workshops held by visiting artists from Hong Kong and China, and a smattering of night classes at Mount Royal College. Over the years, Linda has experimented with watercolor, ink, acrylic and oil paints, but the subject has always been the natural world around her.
Barry Xu
Barry Bing Yu Xu was born in Guangzhou, China and has always aspired to be an artist. He studied fine arts in school and became a teacher in that discipline at the Second Pedagogical College of Guangzhou for over 10 years. In 1991, he had the opportunity to immigrate to Calgary, Canada. It was risky because he had a prospering career in China, but for the benefit of his future generations, he knew this was a chance he had to take. Starting this adventure meant giving up what he worked so hard to establish. Barry worked a variety of jobs in Calgary and finally landed a job as a school janitor with the Calgary Board of Education. It’s a contrasting reality, as he still works at a school, but in such different capacities; nevertheless, Barry continues to paint. Since moving, he’s been exposed to the rich history of western painting and started encompassing their techniques into his works. He started experimenting with different mediums and started working on larger pieces. He has even been asked to paint large murals for stage productions, films and TV shows. He is particularly drawn to the Albertan landscapes and have used it as a focal point for his works the past couple years.