Kailin Zhao

American Chinese artist Kailin Zhao was born in 1961 in Bengbu, Anhui province, China, and had exhibited remarkable artistic talent since a young age. In 1991 Kailin graduated from the prestigious Beijing Central Art Academy, the oil painting class. His life experience in the East and the West, his adaptation and absorption of the innovative concept of the Western art, has afforded him a special place among the traditional realism artists. Most recently his abstract expressionism series employs mesmerizing imagery and visual spiritual message, and displays his complete innovative interpretation of the traditional easel art. As how he integrates the Eastern Philosophy and the Western Innovation in his personal life, Kailin moves fluidly between these two worlds in his artistic practice.

Kailin’s realism oil paintings return to the unembellished and the natural, and convey the real feelings from the bottom of the heart. His colors are exquisite and delicate, centered around the grey, but fused with infinite subtle changes. Moving away from the staid classical realism, Kailin observes the inner world of his objects to the miniscule, and weighs carefully every detail, every color block, his expressions are nuanced and full of feelings. The ordinary people at first glance come to life under his brush, with poignant vividness. This richness comes from the perfect concoction of the artist’s penetrating understanding of the human nature, his deep love for the realistic world, the imprint of his life experience, and the wealth of his cultural origin in China.

30 years’ of creative work in classical realism has garnered Kailin world renown, but he never rests on his Laurels. He continues to explore the novel philosophical concept in modern practice related to the development and innovation of the contemporary art, attempts to capture the subtle conflict of the soul, or the exchange between the feeling and rational world, and explore the continuous dialogue and integration between man and the wide world. In his most recent abstract expressionism works, he attempts to capture every nuanced movement of the original power of human mind, using the subtle yet rich layered colors to convey the passage of time. In Kailin’s art, the real and the surreal scenes disrupt people’s habitual tendency for visual solidity, and the abstract colors unfold a world of the fresh and the sublime.