Bringing Beauty and Peace to the World Through the Art of Color - Artist Chun Liu
Updated: 15 hours ago
By Harrison Engle and Michael Janzen
Painting by Chun Liu
Artist Chun Liu’s color-and-ink paintings have come to the attention of Los Angeles Beverly Arts (LABA), reaching viewers from different countries and regions. In the selection of the “World’s Top 10 Most Influential and Most Valuable Artists” (LABA-MIMV) at the second Los Angeles Beverly Arts (LABA) International Art Festival, Chinese artist Chun Liu distinguished herself through her exceptional international influence, sustained cross-cultural artistic practice, and clearly defined personal approach to art. She ultimately ranked second worldwide, becoming the most prominent Asian artist in this year’s selection.
Global Recognition Through a Rigorous Selection Process
This year’s LABA-MIMV selection was conducted under strict confidentiality. Douglas Ivanovich, chairman of the jury, invited 12 jury representatives from around the world. Each representative consolidated the votes of approximately 200 international jurors whom they represented, participating in a two-week, closed evaluation of 16 nominated artists. The final results were verified and formally confirmed by the New York law firm YK Law to ensure the authority and credibility of the process.
Artist Chun Liu
According to the final rankings released by the jury, the top three artists worldwide were:
First place: Michael Janzen (Canada)
Second place: Chun Liu (China)
Third place: Lilli Muller (United States)
Rosana Largo Rodriguez, European chair of the LABA International Art Festival and a museum director in Spain, observed in her assessment that Liu is a key figure in contemporary cross-cultural dialogue. Her work connects Chinese tradition with modernity through a global perspective, demonstrating considerable maturity in concept, technique, and spirit while significantly strengthening the visibility and voice of Chinese art within the international arts community.
Liu’s placement among LABA’s global top three, and specifically her second-place ranking, carries a clear significance for our times. It reflects not only her individual artistic achievements but also the ability of Chinese artists to participate at the forefront of the international art world through an independent artistic language. The future of art is entering an era of “artistic influence,” and Liu already occupies an important position within it.
“Color-and-Ink Painting”: A Chinese Artistic Language Growing Within a Global Context
Painting by Chun Liu
As the originator of “color-and-ink painting,” Liu builds upon Chinese xuan paper and ink, integrating elements of oil painting, watercolor, and Expressionist color structures. The result is a visual language rooted in Eastern aesthetics that international audiences can also experience directly. In her work, color and ink are no longer opposing forces. They permeate and enrich one another, forming a distinctive and coherent artistic system.
In an interview, jury member and LABA Co-Chair Todd Williamson emphasized that “influence” is one of the central criteria in LABA’s selection process. Liu has not only established a strong artistic standing in Asia but has also held solo exhibitions in major international art cities, including Barcelona, Spain, while maintaining an exceptionally high level of online interest in North America—a combination rarely seen among this year’s nominees.
A Living Example of Chinese Art Reaching the World
Painting by Chun Liu
Liu’s success is no accident. Her creative practice spans painting, moving-image work, cultural communication, and ecological concerns. Through sustained international exchange, she has developed contemporary expressions of traditional Chinese culture. Her works have entered the collections of several international art institutions, and she is regarded as one of the tangible examples of contemporary Chinese art reaching beyond its borders.
Indeed, in Liu’s work, color settles on xuan paper and spreads, while ink slowly emerges along its edges. She calls this mutually illuminating relationship “color-and-ink painting.” From her solo exhibition in Barcelona and the JUSTMAD art fair in Madrid to “The Poetic Realm of Spring” exhibition in Beijing and the international artist selection organized by Los Angeles Beverly Arts, her paintings have entered a variety of exhibition spaces. A résumé can tell us where an artist has been. What truly makes us pause, however, is still that fleeting moment on the paper:
“Color does not conceal the ink, nor does ink take away the radiance of color.”
Begin with a single touch of color in her painting. As it settles, the ink does not retreat. They meet on the xuan paper, sometimes flowing into one another, sometimes remaining at their respective edges. Dense ink lends weight to distant mountains, while bright reds and yellows rise among flowers and trees. A bird rests in a quieter part of the composition, suddenly giving direction to the broad surrounding fields of color. Liu does not fill the entire sheet. She leaves spaces open, allowing color to retain something left unsaid.
Painting by Chun Liu
At first glance, it is easy to be drawn to the colors in her paintings. Look a little longer, and one discovers that ink still provides the underlying support for the composition. It lies beneath the color and stands beside it, determining whether a painting ultimately feels light and airy or quiet and contemplative. The most striking quality of Liu’s work is its captivating use of color and the visual and aesthetic pleasure it offers viewers.
Liu calls her creative method “color-and-ink painting.” Her paintings embody the principle of “giving equal weight to color and ink, using color to support ink and ink to support color.” For years, she has returned to the same question: How can color have a place of its own without allowing ink to lose its presence amid such brilliance?
Over the years, Liu has painted landscapes, flowers and birds, animals, and the seasons. Her subjects vary, but the beauty and harmony of her colors remain the qualities that most strongly attract viewers, bringing a sense of beauty and peace to the world. Liu’s work is like springtime in the course of life. She continually returns to flowers, trees, birds, animals, and landscapes. The same red means something different when it appears in spring blossoms rather than autumn leaves. The same layer of ink takes on a different pace and weight when applied to distant mountains or an animal’s body. Nature offers her more than shapes: it provides enchanting shifts of color and the splendor and brilliance of life continually renewing itself. The beauty of her colors, the depth of her ideas and philosophy, her distinctive creative methods, and her artistic explorations contribute to her influence and leadership in world art. Above all, audiences from different countries and regions respond with affection and keen interest because the colors of her paintings offer a feeling of beauty, peace, and possibility.
Painting by Chun Liu
Liu’s early public biography records her involvement in ecological film and video projects and environmental public-interest activities. Nature is therefore not simply an aesthetic subject in her paintings; it is also connected to her longstanding engagement with life. Landscapes, plants, and animals do not need to carry grand symbolic meanings when they enter her work. They are, first and foremost, living things she has seen and remembered. “Chun,” meaning “spring,” is more than the artist’s name. It exists in the natural world she repeatedly depicts and in the moment when color reappears from the depths of ink. Even when a composition contains broad areas of darkness, she often leaves a single bright accent. That small touch of color makes no grand declaration, yet it gives the sense that something continues to grow within the stillness.
On September 8, 2024, “The Poetic Realm of Spring: An Exhibition of Paintings by Chun Liu” opened at the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Museum of Culture and History, presenting 75 works. Landscapes, flowers and birds, animals, and the four seasons unfolded within a single space, allowing viewers to see that what she calls “color-and-ink painting” is not an accidental style but a creative path developed over many years. The exhibition’s title, “The Poetic Realm of Spring,” suggested a moment of reflection on her own art: spring can be a color, but it can also be a way of encountering time. Paintings leave the studio. When an artist completes a work there, she does not know whom it will eventually meet.
Painting by Chun Liu
On September 20, 2023, Liu’s solo exhibition, “The Artistic Charm of Chun Liu,” opened at the European Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona. The landscapes, flowers and birds, and relationships between color and ink that had grown from her personal experience were placed in the galleries of a European city. Before audiences unfamiliar with the artist’s background, the works had to establish new connections through their own colors, structures, and emotional qualities
Six months later, Liu participated in the 15th JUSTMAD International Contemporary Art Fair, held March 7–10, 2024, at Palacio Neptuno in Madrid. Compared with a solo exhibition, an art fair moves at a faster pace. Works in different media and styles appear alongside one another, and viewers have less time to spend with any single painting. In such a setting, Liu’s color-and-ink paintings encounter people beyond those familiar with the ink-painting tradition. Some viewers may know nothing of the origins of “color-and-ink painting,” yet they can still feel the beauty and warmth conveyed through the interplay of red and black, the gradations of ink, and the atmosphere of flowers, birds, and landscapes. Beijing, Barcelona, Madrid: these different exhibition spaces did not change the color and ink within her paintings, but they changed the eyes through which the works were seen. Once a work leaves its original setting, it must temporarily set aside familiar explanations and stand on its own before strangers.
This is also the practical significance of international exhibitions for an artist: the paintings travel farther, but judgment must ultimately return to the paintings themselves. In January 2025, Los Angeles Beverly Arts, known as LABA, announced its list of 100 artists for the second “2022–2024 Los Angeles Beverly Arts Biennial International Art Festival.” According to materials published by LABA and PR Newswire, the list included 100 artists from 29 countries. Liu was among them, ranked 11th worldwide at that stage.
Painting by Chun Liu
Why, then, did Liu emerge from the final, fully closed judging process in second place worldwide?
Her selection brought her work into a viewing environment shaped by different countries, media, and artistic backgrounds. LABA provided a new setting for her paintings and a further extension of the exhibition experience that had gradually unfolded in Beijing, Barcelona, and Madrid.
For Liu, being seen may mean more than having her name appear on a list. More significant is whether the relationship between color and ink that she has developed over many years can transcend language and become something audiences from different countries and regions can experience directly.
LABA cannot settle every judgment about a painting, but it can give that painting a new place to be seen. Someone who has never heard of Chun Liu may first encounter a field of red, a passage of dense ink, or a bird resting on a branch, and only afterward learn the artist’s name. The work arrives first; the artist’s identity follows. This may be the most natural connection between Liu and LABA. A platform broadens the scope of viewing, while an artist enters it with years of creative practice behind her. She has not abandoned ink because the viewing environment has changed, nor has she muted color to emphasize tradition. She continues to seek her own place between the two.
Painting by Chun Liu
Liu’s public biography lists numerous honors from arts events, cultural organizations, and media programs. In January 2024, she received the honorary designation “People’s Artist,” among other titles, at related arts events. Such recognition reflects the gradual process through which she has become known to the wider public beyond her creative work.Honors bring recognition, but they also bring new expectations. Once a title has been added to a résumé, the painter must still return to the studio and face a blank sheet of paper. She must still decide where the work should be dark, where it should be bright, which brushstroke should remain, and which passage is best left unexplained. In some art-market descriptions, Liu has also been called a “blue-chip artist.” Of course, “blue-chip” is fundamentally a market term rather than an official title.
Liu’s résumé has grown extensive over the years. Running through it all is her commitment to color-and-ink painting. From a single painting to an exhibition, from Beijing to Barcelona and Madrid, and onward to the international community of artists connected through LABA in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, what she hopes people will see may be more than a growing list of achievements. It is a distinctive approach to painting that is becoming increasingly clear. Color is no longer merely an accompaniment to ink, and ink need not define color’s boundaries. The two coexist in her paintings, supporting one another while retaining their individual qualities. With the LABA results announced and the awards presented, these honors will encourage Liu to continue exploring and innovating, discovering how color and ink can keep bringing beauty and peace to the world. From Beijing to Barcelona, Madrid, and Los Angeles, Liu’s paintings leave an artistic language that still has more to say.
Painting by Chun Liu
Later, remarks by jury chairman Douglas Ivanovich finally helped explain why Liu had won second place among the global top three in LABA’s Most Influential and Most Valuable Artists selection; why she received a LABA Icon Award at an Oscars viewing and awards event in March 2025; and why the LABA organizing committee unanimously approved her designation as a LABA Blue-Chip Artist. Ivanovich, who has worked with the Nobel family on arts philanthropy for 15 years, spoke earnestly:
Claes Nobel (Nobel Peace Prize family), guests, and Douglas Ivanovich, CEO of Global Peace One attending a special ceremony with "The Heart of Gold" art sculpture by artist Spar Street
“Artists like Chun Liu illuminate the world through their art, always carrying a spirit of dedication and gratitude toward the world. Through an internationalist outlook, they help lead the course of world civilization. WP1, which I have run for 20 years, will give careful consideration to including works like Liu’s as part of a Nobel Peace Prize team. In the future, we will pursue an application for the Nobel Peace Prize through an appropriate process.”
Painting by Chun Liu
Perhaps a poet in Los Angeles expressed it best:
The most sublime song is not in the artist’s brush,
her ink, her paper, or her inkstone.
It is—
in that fleeting moment,
as she pauses over white clouds on xuan paper,
her heart trembling with an enraptured thought.
A lifetime of watchful devotion;
with every painting, another heaven unfolds.
Indeed, the paintings Liu creates through the art of color will leave the world more than grace, serenity, beauty, and peace. What she brings is an art rooted in the heart, uniting the cultural essence of East and West: “A lifetime of watchful devotion; with every painting, another heaven unfolds.”
Awards
Artist Chun Liu honored with LABA Most Influential and Most Valuable Artist Award with LABA Board member Harrison Engle and radio host Teresa Velazquez
Chun Liu awarded "Lifetime Honorary Art Consultant" by MDSUN Skincare with LABA Board members director Harrison Engle, artist Todd Williamson, and Zehra Sun, CEO MDSUN
Recent Media Coverage
Chun Liu was published in Hollywood Elites Magazine in July 2026.
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