YANG DIN IS LIVING an artist's dream life. He paints full time, has a spacious loft home in the quaint town of Medon outside Paris, a stone's throw from the Musee Rodin. He has two children and a wife, Anne, who is also a painter. A basement studio with skylights and white-washed walls is his sanctuary of creativity. But one look at the artist's calloused hands and the lines on his tanned face reveal this isn't a life that came easily to him.
'It feels really good to be able to pursue my passion full time. I feel like I am finally living my life the way I dreamed of,' Yang says in Putonghua, breaking into fluent French to converse with his wife from time to time. 'All this didn't come easy but I think I have finally achieved peace in my mind.'
Choosing to be a painter isn't just about finding a way to survive, it is also about finding a true calling. One look at Yang's paintings - often sparse, infinite abstract landscapes but always with a figure of a tree, house or animal - indicates that Yang is an artist who never quite leaves reality behind.
'I really feel free, living in France, but I don't forget how I got here,' he says. After all, Yang has travelled a rough road from a young man who wanted to paint but didn't know what art really was, to being a struggling artist in the true sense of the word before getting to where he is today. Born in Shantou in 1958, Yang grew up learning his craft from teachers fervently creating propaganda art. 'All the academics were serving the government and only in their spare time painted classical landscapes,' he says. 'Art was something used in politics.'
By the time he was a teenager, the Cultural Revolution was in full swing and Yang's father, an engineer, fell victim to the purge and eventually died. Yang despised the system and the system didn't consider him a fitting component - in fact, he didn't gain admission to the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art because he didn't possess the right political outlook. So Yang looked for a way out.
'I knew there was no point remaining in China, my mother was supportive because she felt that at least she didn't have to worry about me being in bad company - how bad can painters be?' Yang recalls. So when some relatives who had settled in Paris many years earlier suggested he go there, Yang began the ordeal of leaving China. 'At the time [1979], it took a year just to get my passport. I had to borrow money from friends for airline tickets and all I had was US$30 in my pocket. I couldn't even exchange US dollars at the time because of the currency control,' he says.
