My Bio

“When I cut, the fur is like my body. For me, the process of cutting means constantly looking for the intrinsic nature of painting by continuously going reverse – backward in the continuous passage of time.”

      Catherine Lan was born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1980. Currently a doctoral student in Art and Art Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, she obtained MFA, Painting/Printmaking from Yale University (2007-2009), Artist Diploma from National Higher School of Art in Paris (2003-2006), and Bachelors in Oil Painting from Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (1999-03). She is the recipient of 'Queens Council on the Arts Grant for Individual Artists' (2015), and received the Andrea Frank Foundation Sanyu Scholarship Fund from Yale University (2008-2010). Currently based in Queens, New York, Lan explores new possibilities of the idea of painting with themes such as ‘Floral’ and ‘Landscapes’ with dyed cut faux fur to create ink-like painting-reliefs. Her recent video 'Mist of Lights and Shades' (2015) explores the idea of cutting and the word 'cut', which means to play, act or sing for a recording, the waterfall is played in reverse, playing with the idea of the reversal of time. Instead of adding paint, Lan uses a technique she terms "eliminating": she cuts with scissors to produce relief-like "paintings. The process is spontaneous and irreversible, reflecting the fact that "nothing can go back." Her video 'Journey' (2016) experiments with sounds of cutting; 'The Search' (2016) plays with the jump cut editing process. She continues to explore with ideas of elimination, her body, ready-mades, and reversal.

      Catherine Lan is also an art educator, she has been teaching in colleges and public schools New York, Taipei and Beijing since 2010 until present. Her pedagogy includes: Abstract Art, Drawing, Digital Art, Figurative Art, Installation, Mixed-Media Art, Painting/Collage, and Performance Art.