Qin Fengling’s paintings have both kept the plainness of drawing and the third dimension of sculpture at the same time. While many painters have to deal with the paintings lack of characteristics under the restrictions of traditions, which have already disappeared from her paintings, she has created an original painting language instead. She successfully gets through the limits of traditional painting, and makes her dream, “I want to draw what I want”, come true.

Qin Fengling has found her own art language and fixed her position. She takes a style of individuation, an admiring personality of freedom, independence and creativity. Her attitude toward art has preserved her active, struggling, modest and optimistic spirit.

Qin Fengling was born in Beijing in 1957 and had no formal training in art. But living with an artist—she is married to Wang Luyan—and spending time with his artist friends kindled her interest. Unschooled in conventional techniques, she devised a method that didn’t need a brush, squeezing colours straight from the tube, forming the extrusions into tiny people, then adding dots for mouths and eyes. Her theme is society, a seemingly unlikely choice for a self-declared homebody. But Qin Fengling says it’s an inescapable one in China: “Everyone is affected by society,” she says. “Living in this society at this time leaves scars and marks that can never be erased.”