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MAPLE'S BIO

Maple (Yang Feng Bai) was born in the ancient city of Jiange in China’s Sichuan Province in the southwest of China near Tibet. The youngest of three sisters, her father was the manager of a local rice wine factory and her mother, a front desk clerk at a local hotel. At the age of 5 her 14-year old,
next older sister began teaching her how to draw.

Maple took to it immediately, drawing everything in site: landscapes, portraits, and particularly women in fashionable dresses. She was drawn to their faces, hair, and styles, both modern and traditional, learning the latter from books on Chinese opera. Maple took to writing as well. Telling stories in Putonghua about her life in Jiange, her family, friends, and neighbors.

At 16 Maple went to a college two hours away in Guang Yuan. She majored in English and continued her writing and drawing. But four years later, when she moved to Beijing to get an advanced English degree, Maple gave up most of her writing to focus on painting. “I’m strong. I have very rich ideas I think. I discovered I could not express them in words. Words were too small. Only in painting could I express the big things in my heart.”

While in Beijing Maple met an older student, a painter of abstracts. She became his assistant and learned new abstract techniques in water colors, acrylics, and oil. Slowly Maple moved away from realism to abstracts while continuing her studies.

In 2004 Maple moved to Shanghai. For the first two years she worked in art galleries, learning more from each exhibition, while continuing to explore, refine, and develop her style. After encouragement from friends, Maple decided to strike out on her own to work full-time as a painter. First working out of a studio in western Shanghai and now near downtown Puxi.

Since 2006 Maple has supported herself entirely from her work, holding exhibitions two or three times a year in her studio for a growing list of fans inspired by her work.