SUN JIAPEI
	FOREWORD The brilliance of Sun Jiapei's paintings is found in the presence of that most elusive and ethereal attribute the Chinese call Qi Yun, "the spirit or breath of life". It is said that this quality is the one, which separates the inspired artist -the genius -, from the merely competent. It is the first of the "Six Canons of Painting," which are the foundation of the classically trained Chinese artist. These principles also include the more familiar Western concepts of form, palette, composition, and brushwork, but it is Qi Yun that speaks to the spiritual nature of the Asian aesthetic and the one which was so successfully nurtured in Sun Jiapei during his strict academic training in Shanghai. It is fitting, as well, to refer to the "breath of life" when discussing Sun Jiapei's paintings, since it is the very quality of the air he captures that makes his work transcendental. The rarified atmosphere of a city, whose life force is centered on the rivers and canals that traverse the landscape, has always been the artist's muse. But it is the mist reflected in the late afternoon shadows or the cool night air caught in the morning's first light that is his inspiration. In these nuances, he creates a subtle poetry of time and place. Fixed, yet always in movement, Sun Jiapei captures these ageless cities, renewed by the rhythms of the water and richness of the air. In a quest for greater artistic freedom, Sun Jaipei left China in the 1990's and immigrated first to Japan. He then spent several years living in Europe and gained first-hand knowledge of the canal cities he yearned to paint, among them Venice, Bruges and Paris. He was also able to see in person, for the first time, the works of the great European masters, particularly Rembrandt and Monet, who would both, have a great impact upon his work. Sun Jiapei has returned to Tokyo to live, but he continues to explore a world that was closed to him for so long.
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