About Mai Yap

I always wanted to be an artist. Within the walls of my parent’s home, I was immersed in the beauty, balance and perfection of Chinese millennial traditions passed on from one generation to another. Once outside, my senses were overcome by the amazing colors, sounds and energy of the Tropics. Panama’s natural surroundings provided a bustling backdrop of exciting people, places and music. With this unique ancestral combination showing in all my paintings, their delicate, intricate, yet strong colors burst in all the canvases. From the beginning, my mastery of colors and my unusual close-up flowers helped to establish me as one of South Florida’s premier floral painters. By depicting landscapes in the manner of Van Gogh’s impressionistic pointillism style done entirely with palette knives, I was able to reintroduce this innovative technique and teach it to others. A few years ago, I started to question my beliefs about our environment. These inquiries had a profound effect in my art. Looking for a better way to convey my many concerns and deep emotions, I started to paint only in abstractions. My newest Environmental Abstracts depict nature in motion. Color and movement mimic our planet’s cycles in all their glory. Like in nature, the image is built using a cornucopia of pure colors which are painstakingly applied stroke by stroke, layer by layer, like weaving a tapestry with paint. By manipulating pure oils using only palette knives, I am able to mimic many shapes and effects that occur solely in nature. When the work is finished, I “destroy” the image by making deep cuts, as to feel how the earth feels when she herself is being harmed. Because of the textures that range from completely flat to several millimeters thick, my work has been referred as “sculptures in oils”. Hopefully, these powerful, sometimes whimsical strokes will generate questions that, in turn, help to convey my environmental message.