I began painting seriously in Shanghai in 1997. During the rainy plum season, I worked every day for two weeks in a friend’s studio, a small warehouse inside a vocational school. Earlier that year, I had travelled through Xi’an, Qinghai, Chengdu, Tibet and Xinjiang, a journey that changed how I saw the world. That July, I left for Vancouver on a one-way ticket and began a new life in Canada.

Around 2005, after several unsettled years of studies, work and starting over, I found my way back to painting for a brief period. These works remain from two moments of transition — one just before leaving China, and the other while I was beginning to find my place in a new country