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Born in Chongqing, Sichuan Provence, in 1941, Yuan Jai graduated from the Division of Chinese Painting, Department of Art at the National Taiwan Normal University in 1962. After receiving an MA degree from the Department of Archaeology and Art History, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium in 1966 and completing doctoral courses at Institut royal du Patrimoine artistique, Belgium in 1968, she returned to Taipei and began her career as a conservator at the National Palace Museum for over three decades. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that Yuan re-established her painting practice with ink landscapes, experimenting with abstract compositions and colour combinations. She gradually developed her distinct artistic gongbi (‘meticulous brush’) style as she started to work more frequently with ink on silk, allowing her to apply thicker layers of colours than on paper, which she considers as more closely representing modern visual experiences and material culture. Inspired by Chinese blue-green landscape paintings, figurative painting, and the heritage of folk culture, as well as Western artistic movements such as Art Nouveau and Surrealism, her playful works explore the intersection of the splendid and the everyday. Yuan Jai’s recent solo exhibitions include Yuan Jai, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2020; and A Visionary Mind: The Art of Yuan Jai in a Quarter-Century, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung, 2012. She also recently participated in the exhibitions The Weight of Lightness: Ink Art at M+, M+ Pavilion, West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong, 2017; Memories Interwoven and Overlapped, Post-Martial Law Era Ink Painting in Taiwan, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, 2017; Majestic Island – The Development of Modern Art in Taiwan (1911-2011), The National Art Museum of China, Beijing; China Art Museum, Shanghai, 2012; and Future Pass – From Asia to the World, Collateral Event of the 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, 2011.