Artwork Description

Title: Old Yard
Artist: Li Yan
Date: 2014
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 60 x 50 cm

Artwork Identification:
Old Yard captures the vibrant, shifting beauty of nature in full bloom. The lower portion of the canvas features a dense, multi-hued arrangement of trees with brilliant red, orange, yellow, and green foliage, while the upper field of the composition blurs into abstract, dreamlike skies rendered in soft washes of blue, green, and gold. The impression is one of reflection—perhaps through a body of water—offering duality between the tangible world and its ephemeral counterpart.

Artistic Style and Influences:
Li Yan’s painterly approach blends impressionistic brushwork with a modern sensibility, allowing color and texture to drive emotional resonance. The verticality of the composition, along with its layered application of pigment, invokes a poetic meditation on memory, seasons, and perception. His landscapes often blur the line between realism and abstraction, emphasizing mood over strict representation.

Historical Context:
Painted in 2014, Old Yard reflects a contemporary engagement with the natural world that is both nostalgic and forward-looking. The Title: itself suggests a personal or communal space laden with memory, made universal through Li Yan’s evocative rendering of light and color.

Provenance:
Provenance documentation can be provided upon contact.

Condition and Conservation:
The artwork is in very good condition. The surface and canvas are stable with no visible defects, and the colors remain fresh and vivid, preserving the work’s original atmospheric quality.

Artistic Significance:
Old Yard stands as a testament to Li Yan’s lyrical interpretation of nature, memory, and place. The painting invites the viewer into a contemplative state, where foliage, light, and sky merge in a harmonious and dreamlike vision of an imagined or remembered space.