One day, while painting, a sudden bright streak of sunlight fell across a canvas Yi Liu was working on. It was completely unexpected and magical– clean, shockingly bright, and it somehow felt divine in the moment. Liu was deeply moved by its presence, and as the light sat with her, inhabiting the painting, she quickly traced its luminous shape onto her painting. This beam of light, which had been cast from the depths of outer space, was privately preserved by Liu to honor this miraculous and sacred moment, exactly as it appeared to her.

This level of openness and sincerity of spirit guides Yi Liu when she is creating art and bringing new worlds to life in her studio. Dreams dance with Chinese mythology, folklore, history, and her vivid personal fantasies to create beguiling, highly surrealistic images that beckon us in with warmth and a palpable charm that quietly throbs with passion and romantic heat.

The ancient story of “the hunt” is the spark and conceptual starting point for each new painting in this series, all of which are uniformly titled The hunt. Goddesses formed of mist and light preside in many of the works, some hovering with butterfly wings in the sky like ghosts, and others formed more of flesh, one riding backwards on a charging bull, clinging to a lover for one last kiss.

There is a sense that these epic hunts and quests are as much about play and lust as they are about sustenance and true love. The universes depicted are both celestial and grounded, with wild beasts, birds and alien-like creatures congregating to commune, before quickly dipping back into the cosmos in hot pursuit of their conquest. There is an unexpected level of depth and emotion in Liu’s otherworldly narratives, as people, animals, and spirits mingle and dissolve into one another to form the ethereal night.