Born and bred in Suzhou, a river city in the south of China, Yang Mingyi has a deep affection for the beauty and tranquility of southern China’ s river towns. Since his father opened the well-known brush store  “Yang Er Lin Tang,” which sold “Hu brushes,”  he was familiar        with Chinese brushes and ink from an early age. In the following years, he studied at Suzhou Art and Design Technology Institute and then China’ s Central Art Academy. In his forties, he pursued further studies in the United States. In his long artistic journey, China’ s river towns have always remained close to his heart. From the 1970s, he started to develop a new style of painting river towns in water-ink, a style that has won praise from art experts both at home and abroad, and has been much imitated by many art students.
    Yang Mingyi’ s greatest artistic skills are observing and exploring. His works are composed of simple strokes, yet not only seem to be clean and clear, but also full of the memories of one’ s hometown. In his early working days, he was assigned to make block prints. Rather than posing an obstacle for him in his creative painting, his experience in block printing further enriched his ideas, and he finally created his own style of painting. He found that most houses in Zhouzhuang and other river towns of southern China had black tiles and white walls, and that such features were quite well suited to large blocks of ink and the straight lines he employs in his works. Therefore, he applied the features of China’ s wood-carving to traditional Chinese painting, by using great blocks of ink and lines to show the characteristics of China’ s river towns. In his works of art, one can appreciate the unique beauty of river towns, with their light rain, fish and birds, autumn lotus, small bridges, houses by the riverbanks, etc. He draws with high proficiency, yet with no redundant strokes. His paintings aim to show the quietness and elegance of the small towns. Each of his pictures has a complete composition, appropriate distribution of color and a central theme. Furthermore, the pictures always have subtle decorations Ñ a crescent moon in the sky, stars twinkling in the dark night, a small boat moored in front of a house, or a flowerpot on the table in the street corner. Although there are not so many of these decorations, they always seem to be in the right place, indicating the painter’ s ingenuity.
    Yang Mingyi never forgets the advice given to him when he was a young man by Huang Yongyu, one of his teachers at China’ s Central Art Academy, who said that “a good painter should have his own painting style.” Yang’ s painting not only shows his longing for innovation, but the respect he also has for tradition. Such a combination not only displays his great artistic courage, and represents his life-long goal as well.