Landscape  in the painting is also about man

              Reporter: Are you father and daughter  working together?
              Yang Yanlai: We are all living in Guangzhou, but not  together. He always shows me his paintings, and I also 
              show him mine. After a  while, we exchange our ideas. My father does landscape and birds and flowers,  but 
              mostly humans. I specialize in landscape. Though we have different  specializations, we could give each other
              suggestions for the onlooker commands  a better view.
              Reporter: Are you looking for materials  involving hometown or foreign places?
              Yang Yanlai: We are settled in Guangzhou, so it is  common for our works to reflect the feeling towards this 
              city. However, the  long-term absence from hometown draws us nearer to it. My father once wrote an  essay 
              collection “On the top of Changling”, featuring a local place in Changsha, and this book detailed our experi-
              ence of decades  in Changsha City. Our works are not all about  hometown, but they are created against the
              “Xiang and Chu Culture”  background.  Many critics also point out that our paintings embody the “Chu Cul-
              ture”. I did not  realize such culture in my paintings until I read “A Pilgrimage to Beauty”, a  book written by
               Li Zhehou, which mentions that this culture inspired sculptures  and paintings full of imagination, exoti
               imagination and full of go. This  thought converges with my theory and practice. I made contact with “Chu
              Culture” without  consciousness. I myself am attached to strong artistic imagination, and my  paintings are 
              guided by my nature, without any restriction. After I read “A Pilgrimage  to Beauty”, I recognized that I am 
              finally oriented to the homeland culture. So  is my father, from top totoe. If you have some idea about “Chu 
              Culture”, you can feel  it in our paintings. In fact, “hometown” is a concept carried in the artist’s  vein.
              Reporter: Critics label you with “Live  Landscape Artist”? How do you take it?
              Yang Yanlai: I take it as a compliment:  they regard me as someone who paints with my nature and under-
              standing; I paint  differently.
              Reporter: Tell us some episodes about the  paintings by you and your father.
              Yang Yanlai: In this exhibition, my father’s  painting “Tranquil”, featuring a man, a lotus. There is no episode, 
              but it is full of linear senses and artistic conception. His “Triple Happinesses”  features three traditional mater-
              ials: lotus, fish and bird. However, it has the  appeal and charm which belongs, and only belongs to him.
              In the 8 paintings of mine on exhibition, though it is not the case that  every painting has a story behind it, the
              paintings themselves have stories in  them, stories about people. My landscape paintings all have people as 
              the  theme. There are some little men in them, these men are the plots. “Clear Night”  is about men talking at 
              clear night: the environment is delicate and the man in  it is interesting. “See You” is about asking you to turn
              back when biddinggood-by;  it is funny itself. “Following You” is about two men walking together. This is  me.
              I paint landscape, but I talk about people. I want to express the bondage  and delicacy between individuals in 
              this world with clear landscape. 

                                                                                                                                                                                            
                                                                                                                                                                             --From Guangzhou Daily