Yim Maukun (冉茂芹, b. 1942, also known as "Ran Mao-qin" in Mandarin) is a Chinese artist, educator, and author, best known for his portraiture, nudes, historical/narrative works, and plein air landscapes. He works with a range of media, including oil painting, charcoal, ink, watercolor, and pastels. As part of his exhibits, Yim's work has been shown at two of the most important and prestigious museums in Taiwan, the Kaoshiung Chiang Kai-shek Cultural Center and the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei (where he is also part of the permanent collection); he has been featured in dozens of publications, including Rachel Robin Wolf's recent Strokes of Genius: The Best of Drawing series published by North Light Books) and several of the more prominent art magazines and daily newspapers in China and Taiwan. Yim's instructional painting series has appeared on the Taiwanese networks China TV and Beautiful Life Television.

Early life through the Cultural Revolution

Yim was born during World War II in Changde, Xiangxi, in Hunan province in south central China. Hunan had been invaded by the Japanese during the war, first in 1939 but only successfully in 1945 near the end of the conflict. As Mao Zedong's native province, Hunan had long been an active Communist area, including the site of a short-lived soviet in the early 1930s, but both sides of Yim's family consisted of members of the educated, property-owning (if not wealthy) class. Beyond that, Yim's father (Ran Peng 冉鵬) was a prominent official in the Nationalist government, as head of finance and transportation.

Upon Mao's revolutionary victory at the end of 1949/early 1950, Ran Peng left the country to join the exile government of Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) in Taiwan, leaving his wife and children behind in Hunan. According to the accounts, he did so still hoping to provide for them or to even soon bring them to the island, but this proved impossible (although for many years he was able to send letters and money to his wife through go-betweens in Hong Kong). Ran became head of the Department of Commerce under Chiang and was later general manager of the Hsinchu Glass Corporation and legal counsel to the government's Ministry of Economic Affairs. Yim would not see his father again.

Yim attended the Affiliated High School of the Guangzhou (Canton) Academy of Fine Arts and then the Academy itself, graduating in 1963. Because of his background as a member of one of the so-called "black classes", he had only been barely accepted as a student in the Affiliated School following the intervention of the Dean, Hu Yichuan; in fact, one of the "crimes" Hu would later be charged with during the Cultural Revolution was admitting Yim into the school. [For more on Hu Yichuan, see Julia F. Andrews, Painters and Politics in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1979 (University of California Press, 1995).]

While at the Arts academy, Yim was compelled to focus on "craft art", in his case specifically theater design. Craft Arts were seen as a more practical pursuit during a time of economic hardship for the country and also less tainted by Western influences; the other programs had been cut as part of the reforms overseen by Mao's wife, Jiang Qing. Following his graduation Yim served for fifteen years as the sole stage designer for a regional Guangdong theater repertory group—later "cultural worker troupe"—centered in Zhaoqing. The group was created as part of the 1960s equivalent of the Rectification Movement, charged with the task of bringing propaganda to the people. Yim's tasks included set design and backdrop scenery, and, as he recalls in his autobiography, "painting egg-sized Chairman Maos on projector slides."

During this time, Yim would in his free hours practice Chinese ink painting with his classmate and good friend Lin Fengsu. Many of the pieces were based on the Liao Zhai, a collection of Chinese ghost stories or on classics such as the Shijing (Book of Poetry).

Given his parentage and the extremely hostile attitude toward any "bourgeois" or "non-revolutionary" artistic pursuits during the Cultural Revolution, the decade was a tumultuous and often a personally very difficult period for Yim. This included time spent doing rural labor and mine work in a coal gang. Like many artists, intellectuals, and others, Yim was publicly shamed and beaten, humiliatingly paraded through the streets and denounced; his entire family faced severe discrimination because of their background. Amid the fervor and frenzy of the Red Guards, most of Yim's artwork from these years was destroyed in the name of anti-capitalist "permanent revolution."

As the attitude towards art became slightly more relaxed with the first National Fine Arts Exhibition held in 1972, Yim was more able to pursue his own artistic interests and enter various regional and national competitions, all while still working for the troupe. He was enlisted by the Cultural Bureau on several occasions to participate in "provincial collective creativity sessions" throughout Guangdong, and by 1977 had earned sufficient favor from the regional cultural bureau to receive a grant to spend a month painting in Yuebei. By the mid-late 1970s, his paintings, with the pro-worker and heroic peasant motifs typical of the era (cf. Soviet Realism) and obligatory portraits of contemporary political leaders, had been featured in publications including Beijing Daily, Southern Daily, and Beijing Art. Yim gained major acclaim as the runner-up in the National Chinese Art Exhibition in 1975 for The Troupe Going Aboard. In 1978, his Warrior Song won first place at the Guangdong Province Art Exhibition. Additionally, Warrior Song was published in full color in Guangdong Arts and Literature, one of the few nationally distributed periodicals in China at the time. The famed artist and film director Chen Yifei was so impressed by the work that he invited Yim to dine with him at his home in Shanghai in 1979.

Yim at this point was also becoming more interested in themes related to ancient Chinese mythology, seen in pieces like Nuwa (1979) about the creator goddess of the same name, a subject he would return to in later works. Among the other significant works Yim completed during this span are the following: South Sea Waves (pastel on paper, 1974), Lingnan in February - Maan Coal Mine at Zhaoqing (pastel on paper, 1975), Sun Setting on Xijiang (pastel on paper, 1976), Maan Coal Miners (oil on canvas, 1977), Yao Farmers (oil on canvas, 1977), and Jiaona (ink on rice paper, 1979),

Two years after the death of his father, Yim was granted permission to move to Kowloon, Hong Kong, and then was able to visit Taiwan to help settle the estate. In Kowloon he would live in a cramped high rise apartment with his mother, younger brother, and fellow artist and friend, Li Changbo, who had all moved there earlier in the year. Yim had been married and a father since 1974, but his wife and young children were only gradually permitted to join him in Hong Kong and ultimately Taiwan one by one over the next several years, not fully reuniting until 1988.

Hong Kong period

As he puts it, Yim arrived penniless in Hong Kong in 1980. He effectively was starting from scratch at age 38, leaving behind whatever reputation he had established in China as an artist for the previous fifteen years. He first earned income working on "export paintings" for art dealers. These consisted mainly of full-sized personal and family portraits made from small photos, replicas of classical European paintings, and reproductions of pieces from various international art magazines. While this can be considered more of a money-making trade than true art, it was nevertheless a crucial stage in Yim's career for refining his techniques. It led to an arrangement through the art dealer Xu Yaolin in 1981 for Yim to produce original works—two original oil paintings per month—for the Simic Gallery in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, as an associate painter. Several noteworthy pieces were the result of this (including Eternal Devotion, My San Francisco and the original version of Sunset), but the arrangement ended prematurely when Yim's application for a travel visa to the U.S. was denied in 1982.

By this time Yim had realized the need for using real life models (he was not strictly speaking yet a figure artist) and for opening a proper studio. 1983 marked the beginning of the Yim Maukun Studio on Prince Edward Road in the Edward Mansion area of Kowloon, where he would further hone his craft and hold demonstrations and classes regularly until 1988. His figure drawing and oil painting students would later be among the most prominent members of the Hong Kong art community, both as artists and instructors, such as Poon Yeuk Fai 潘耀輝, Bacchus Tong 唐家宏, Chu Ka Ming 朱嘉明, and Deng Yi Nong 鄧亦農.

A list of Yim's important pieces from his Hong Kong years would include Eternal Devotion (oil on canvas, 1981); Yang Jufen (oil, 1982); Derek Adkins (oil on canvas, 1983); Hot Corn (oil on canvas, 1984); Doorman (oil on canvas, 1984); Night Life (oil on canvas, 1984); Florist (Charcoal on rice paper, 1984); Artist's Wife (oil on canvas, 1985); Lady in White (charcoal on canvas, 1987); Untitled (oil on canvas, 1987); and Christina (oil on canvas, 1987). His first solo exhibition was in 1985 at the Pau Siu Loong Gallery in Hong Kong.

Taiwan

With the help of one of his father's good friends, Zhao Yaodong (head of the Ministry of Economics in Taiwan), by 1985 Yim had begun traveling regularly between Hong Kong and Taiwan for commissioned portraits; these trips became more frequent by 1986. This led to a very successful and highly publicized plein air portrait demonstration for the Apollo Gallery in Taipei in 1987 which generated positive attention from the city's newspapers and television stations. Lee Teng-hui, then Vice-President of Taiwan (and who would become President in 1988) saw the event on TV, was impressed and attended the exhibition that followed. All in all the demonstration proved to be a major boost to Yim's career, leading to a number of published works, including covers for Crown Magazine and the Far Eastern Economic Review that same year, and further portrait commissions of other prominent individuals from Taiwanese society. Yim's partnership with the Apollo gallery would continue into the 1990s, and Lee Teng-hui would remain one of his avid collectors and patrons. The Apollo demonstration was clearly a turning point in Yim's life as a professional artist.

The major works from these Taiwan years—all oil paintings—include Evening Spring Rain in Taipei (1990); Reaching Shore (Taiwan Forefather Series) (1995); Crossing the Stormy Strait (Taiwan Forefather Series) (1996); Mackay Practicing Medicine (1996); Autumn Harvest on the Plateau (1997); The Death of Concubine Yang (1999); Lady in Shimmering Light (2002); Alishan Forest (2002); Lady in Green (2003); Sakura (2005); Tanya (2006); Westside Evening (2010); Xuan Zang (2011); and Emperor Guangxu and Consort Zhen (2015).

Travel

By 1988 Yim had moved to Taiwan permanently and his family would join him the following year. It was a prosperous time both for the island and for Yim as an artist, and this enabled travel to become a major element of his work and his lifestyle. The ensuing years would feature painting trips not only to Europe but throughout mainland China, New Zealand, the United States, and Japan, with remarkable output (sixty paintings during his 1990 trip to Western Europe alone) and exhibitions resulting from that work. He led a successful tour of twenty Taiwan art students to Russia in 2001. A 2009 workshop tour in the U.S. included the Scottsdale Artists' School (Arizona), Studio 2nd Street in Encinitas, CA, and the Steve Carpenter Art Center of Rochester, New York. One of his more recent overseas workshops was in Shenzhen, China, in 2014.

Educator