Formal Education

• 2012: Postgraduate Certificate, Chinese Art (History), SOAS, University of London

• 2008–09: Master of Media Arts and Production (Film and Video), University of Technology Sydney

• 2005–08: Bachelor of Commerce (Double Majors: Marketing and French Studies), University of Sydney

I began painting in 2013, at the age of twenty-seven. Within a year, my work had been selected by the National Portrait Gallery, London, and by the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, the Royal Society of British Artists, and the Society of Women Artists. Since then, it has been exhibited consistently in major UK exhibitions and competitions.

Recognition

• Two-time winner of the Ondaatje Prize for Portraiture at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, London; recipient of the Gold Medal for the Most Distinguished Portrait

• Two-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, Montreal

• Exhibitions in major UK museums, including:

• National Portrait Gallery, London

• Scottish National Portrait Gallery

• Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool

• Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Wales

• Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens

A Journey Beyond the Mainstream

From the outset, I deliberately kept my distance from the commercial art world, choosing instead to cultivate an independent artistic voice outside the conceptual and postmodern mainstream of contemporary art.

Years of solitude, reflection, and rigorous study enabled me to develop the metaphysical framework underpinning Hortus Conclusus | 寓形於兩間. The series was conceived not merely as a body of paintings, but as an evolving artistic structure capable of continual growth. This journey was neither a pursuit of technical mastery nor an exercise in pure concept, but a search for wholeness through the union of form and thought.

Toward a Unified Vision

My work draws upon the literary, philosophical, and art-historical traditions of both East and West, alongside psychology, economics, and politics. This interdisciplinary foundation enables me to engage with the complexities of our time and weave them into a unified artistic vision.

I aspire to carry forward the Romantic tradition through what Richard Wagner called the Gesamtkunstwerk—the “total artwork.” For me, this is not an accumulation of disciplines but their synthesis into a coherent aesthetic and intellectual whole, a way of thinking that has long been intrinsic to the tradition of Chinese literati art.

Noam Chomsky’s quip about postmodernism—“I can’t understand what they’re talking about, but they seem to understand each other”—captures a profound alienation in Contemporary Art. Hortus Conclusus strives for the opposite: a space where depth and accessibility coexist, and where connections can be as nuanced as they are universal.