Abundance in Becoming
February 26 – March 22, 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 26, 5-8PM
Artist in Attendance

Yangyang Pan is a Chinese Canadian painter whose vivid, gestural abstractions draw deeply from the natural world and from the philosophical ideas that shaped her early life. Born in Chongqing and trained at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, where she later taught before moving to Canada, she has developed a distinctive practice that blends Eastern concepts of balance, emptiness, and inner spirit with the expressive possibilities of Western oil painting. Her work, often described as lyrical and emotionally charged, transforms impressions of landscapes, gardens, and atmosphere into layered fields of colour and movement.

We had a chance to correspond with Pan ahead of her upcoming show, Abundance in Becoming, at the Art Gallery of Hamilton's Art Sales + Services gallery.

At what age did you know you wanted to study art? Did you grow up with artists in your family or immediate community? 

I think I knew I wanted to study art as early as kindergarten. I remember someone asking my name, and I just drew a shining sun on the floor with chalk. Everyone was surprised and said they believed I would become an artist one day. My parents were not professional artists, but they always loved the arts, playing instruments like the violin and Erhu in their spare time, and often going to theatrical performances and other cultural activities on weekends. Growing up in 1980s China, there were not many activities for kids after school, few TV programs, no phones, and no computers. I enjoyed playing ping pong and roller skating with neighbours, but most of my time was spent alone at home, drawing, making clay sculptures, or reading. My older sister, who is seven years older than me, had gone to art school, and I always admired her. She along with her boyfriend, who also graduated from Sichuan Fine Art Institute, spent a lot of time guiding me in drawing and painting. With their support and consistent practice, I eventually became the youngest student admitted in 1990 to the highly competitive affiliated high school of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, where I lived and studied on campus for the four-year program. That experience changed my life and set me on the path to earning my BFA and MFA at SFAI.

You often talk about Eastern ideas shaping your work, even though you do not consciously reference traditional imagery. How do those ideas show up in your painting when you’re just responding to the canvas?

Throughout my early years and education in Chongqing I absorbed not only artistic training but also a way of seeing the world. It shaped how I understand the relationship between space, time, nature, and emotion, and over time this has become something intuitive in my work. One influence comes from traditional Chinese art’s emphasis on Yi, the idea or inner spirit, rather than direct representation. In my paintings, I tend to focus more on movement, rhythm, and emotional flow, using abstraction to convey atmosphere and energy rather than describing specific forms. Another influence is the use of space. The relationship between emptiness and fullness continues to guide my compositions. In Chinese painting, negative space, or Liu Bai (leaving blank), is not an absence but an active part of the image. It allows space to breathe and invites the viewer to complete the experience, which has shaped my sensitivity to balance and openness. Finally, Chinese philosophy, especially Taoist and Confucian thought, views humans as part of nature rather than separate from it. Because of this, painting for me is less about control and more about response, allowing process, chance, and energy to enter the work through gestural brushstrokes and movement. These influences shape my thinking in a general way, however, I don’t consciously reference ancient Chinese art in my daily practice. In the studio, I focus more on what is happening on the canvas in the moment, responding to the process itself and exploring the possibilities that oil paint can offer.

Ma Yuan, 1190 - 1279 | What inspires me most about Ma Yuan is his use of empty space, and how it shapes the composition. That approach continues to influence how I think about space and balance in my paintings. -Y. Pan

Concepts like leaving space, balance, and inner energy come from Chinese painting, but you work in oil paint, which has a Western history. What happens when those worlds meet on the canvas?

Oil paint gives me freedom to explore gesture, layering, and texture, and I enjoy what the material allows. At the same time, I remain sensitive to space and balance. The combination of Western material and Chinese ideas about emptiness and rhythm helps the work feel open and breathing, with movement and stillness existing together. It’s not about merging two traditions consciously—it is more that my experience naturally brings them together.

Yangyang Pan, Elsewhere, oil on linen, 24x44 inches.

I am so interested to know if you can identify any influences that shaped your practice 2009 – 2012. In the late aughts you apply colour within a defined xy plane or axes. But then, and it seems abrupt, your work starts to morph, almost as if geomagnetic forces are bending those axes, and then your work becomes something different. It’s like the big bang! Were there major life events or teachers that influenced this shift?

Between 2009 and 2012, I continued to be influenced by French Impressionism and American Abstract Expressionism. I spent a lot of time looking at painters such as Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hofmann, Mark Rothko, Jean Paul Riopelle, Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler and Cy Twombly. Their approaches to colour, structure, and gesture stayed with me as my work evolved. There wasn’t any major life event during this period, but I started participating more in exhibitions and art fairs, and also accepted commissioned work, which made my studio life very busy. I painted every day, constantly experimenting, with a strong desire to push beyond my own limits and become more confident working through field of colours and brushwork. Through this sustained process, I gradually felt more freedom and control with oil paint, especially in gesture, mark-making, layering, and the balance between adding and reducing. The earlier structure in my work began to loosen naturally through the process itself.

Joan Mitchell, Un Jardin pour Audrey, 100 x 142 inches, 1975 | I have always been inspired by Joan Mitchell’s painting, especially her use of colour and gesture. Her work feels immediate and full of energy, with brushstrokes that carry both emotion and movement. Even in abstraction, her paintings hold a strong sense of landscape or place and atmosphere, which continues to influence how I think about rhythm, colour, and energy in my own work. -Yangyang Pan