Huang Dan was born in Guangxi, China, in 1979. Choosing to study art was part passion, part compulsion, driven by her yearning to capture the vibrancy and vigour of her surround-ings. Moving to Beijing at once separated her from some aspects of the natural world, and affirmed her fascination with its strange beauty. She was in the capital to study at the Central Academy of Fine Arts: she graduated with a BA from the Department of Traditional Chinese Painting in 2001. In 2004, she was awarded an MA from the same institution.
Marking her official debut into the art world, her first solo exhibition was the Scent of a Woman exhibition in Seoul in 2006. This event took place simultaneously with a group show entitled The Seventies Ink Exhibition at the Yanhuang Art Museum, Beijing. She was featured in the group show alongside other artists born in the 1970s.Followers of the artist's work will notice significant and recurring motifs within them: young children, horses and acrobats, carefully positioned in a natural world with expanses of dream-like azure water, sinewy trees and black skies.
Huang describes the horse in the language of classical Chinese painting. The horse is “stable as a mountain, and the horse’s eyes are as clear water. Painting a horse is like painting an animal’s “landscape”. In earlier paintings, when the artist was conveying narrative, horses tended to be grouped with children. Increasingly, animals (including the horse) are seen alone in paintings. As the artist puts it: “I no longer need works with narrative and plot. The horse became the only protagonist.”
The scenic backdrops of Huang's paintings are familiar to all of us, and yet rendered unfamiliar by their depictions in her paintings: static, immobile, impenetrable. These landscape features are inspired by the nature of the artist’s everyday life. They form a constant presence in her mind, and a companion to her thoughts: “It’s impossible not to keep thinking of them since I see them every day.”As Huang remarks: “It is because of my curiosity about myself that I explore the world: this self exploration drives me to see more and more. The scenery is unique. It’s like stand-ing on the cliff looking down from a point of view that only you can see. This kind of feeling… makes me want to continue.”
Currently living and working in Beijing, Huang has a sense of excitement about the future. This thrill is born of the equilibrium she has reached through maturity and a calm family environment, anchored in motherhood. As she puts it: “When you are sure that the main meaning of the life is fixed, then it brings focus and a sense of readiness for the ad-ventures and challenges of the future. The future is uncertain, and everything is possible.”