– by Huiyang Wang –
In one of her paintings, May Ip-Lam portrayed a spectacular yet distinctive eagle through traditional and contemporary Chinese watercolours with rich dark mars-black and burnt-sienna strokes. Unlike other eagles in paintings, which either proudly fly in the sky with their powerful and wide-spread wings, or stingingly stare at you with their piercing eyes, May’s eagle stands there, serenely and sedately, with its head hanging down as it caresses its wings. Time stands still in its tender and gentle eyes. “My daughter said the eagle looks so sad,” said May, an 88-year-old Chinese artist, with a smile on her face, “but I don’t think so. Why do people always want to see strong and vigorous eagles fly in the sky showing their masculinity? Sometimes they are as fragile as we all are.”
May Ip-Lam was born on May 12, 1926 in Kunming, Yunnan province, China. She spent most of her childhood at her grandfather’s beautiful and peaceful farm in Guangdong province, where her grandfather, a cultivated gentleman, inspired her with his love of calligraphy. Her father also loved to paint with brush and ink, melding Western and Chinese painting into his art. “When I looked at my father creating those powerful and sturdy images with soft brushes, for the first time I saw magic,” said May. “I knew that painting was something I wanted to do for my whole life.”
In 1969, her whole family immigrated to Canada, and since then she has lived in Victoria. Studying her father’s approach, she began to develop her own style. She expressed the freedom of life through animals – curious nightingales singing unchained melodies. She portrayed her love of the world through landscapes – forest-clad mountains sing a soothing lullaby. Eventually, she opened her own art gallery in Chinatown in 2008, surrounded by her father’s legacies and her own creations.
She saw things differently and created unexpected touches.
White bamboos have become her forte. May unfolded a huge scroll, and a grove of white bamboo appeared, with a full-bodied dark background, embellished with gentle light magenta highlights, as if you could see the wind blowing through the forest. “White gives me a sense of clean and honest. That’s what I think of bamboos as well.”
The Royal BC Museum has curated two of May’s spectacular works. However, it may come as a surprise that when asked to take pictures of her paintings, she was a little bit reluctant. “Actually I don’t want my works to be digitized.” Last year, an American company was willing to buy her works at an incredibly high price, but May refused their offer. “Because they wanted to make thousands of copies of my works, and sell them. Mass production. The hazard of the modern world.” May looked at her weather-beaten hands and said, “can you really feel the beauty of the painting through that screen? Can you feel the painter’s soul without seeing the original work? If one day, you can only find those digital images on the internet and no one even bothers asking for the original work, would you call it art then? Please don’t let art die.” The artist’s eyes looked a little helpless when those powerful thought-provoking questions came out of her mouth.
