A bed of flower in the last sunlight on a summer evening

A beautiful cottage on Northshore of Clear Lake in summer morning light

A beautiful cottage in summer morning light on the North Shore of Clear Lake of Riding Mountain National Park. Painted this cottage just a few days before I left for China in June and never got a chance to take a picture of the finished painting. Yesterday morning I had the pleasure to meet its owner for the first time and she graciously let me to take a picture of it hanging framed nicely on her cottage wall.

Home under the prairie sky Brandon West

Wife's garden

The wife's Garden a quick oil sketch in the evening braving the vicious assault from swarms of mosquitoes

A sense of home --- from our patio in our backyard on June 13, 2016 my 25th anniversary of moving from China to Canada and calling Brandon my home.
Each year I will mark this special day in my life with a painting reflecting on aspects of my life as a journey. As I have shared before on Facebook with friends Three existing life circumstances accompanies my early years of growing up in the then Communist China : I lived a life of political repression, a life of sensual deprivation, and a life of geographical isolation. Instead of diminishing me in their intended ways, each inadvertently empowered and enriched me in its own unique way. It seems a bit paradoxical for me here to express my thankfulness for each of these forces.
I am thankful for my early life experience with political repression in China. Without that dark passage of my early life, I would never have been so keenly appreciative of what a world of light we are living in today in Canada with so much freedom of choices.
I am thankful for my early life experience with sensual deprivation in China. Deprivation of things materialistic has made me easily satisfied and satiated with simply things in my life as if any more of it would be way too rich for my simple palate,on the other hand the deprivation of my early opportunity to be exposed to what is best from human civilizations in terms of knowledge, art and culture has only created an avalanche of unquenchable thirst and desire in me for anything that is beautiful under the sun. I remember the yearning for reading was so strong in me when I was a young boy, and the pang of deprivation of any access to books in particular and education as whole was almost as painful as hunger and starvation. I remember how in late 70s when the changes in China suddenly lifted ban on what we were allow to read , the sense of joy from the fact that I had the freedom and opportunity to read again was so visceral . Who would find his heart palpitate so much at the mere sight of a new book on a bookshelf in a bookstore as if he were on his first date.
I am thankful for the geographical isolation that I found myself in the moment I was born. Fenced in by Altay Mountains on one side and blocked in by Gobi desert on the other, I literally could not see the distant horizon. The sense of isolation was so strong and so tangible that it only created an unstoppable urge and momentum to break the physical barrier to get out of it despite of all the odds. It is the same force of desire to see a distant horizon that propelled me to pick up English from scratch at the age of 18 totally on my own. There was simply no utilitarian value of learning a foreign language then in China. Only in my mind’s eyes I somehow instinctively felt that the English language might eventually open a new window onto a distant horizon. It did eventually. It led me first out of the isolated Northwestern China to the coast area of China and then eventually led me all the way out of Post Tiananmen Square China to Canada.

25 years ago today, on 13 of June 1991 Having been flying over the pacific ocean for 12 hours after bidding my farewell to my loved ones left behind in China, and when I caught first sight of the beautiful west coastline of Canada from the air, I sobbed uncontrollably, two forces were tearing through my heart at that particular moment: overwhelming sense of sadness over my separation and overwhelming sens of joy over the start of my new life in Canada, the two mingled together and melted into stream of tears.

Another beautiful home in Brandon West early in the morning

Prairie Fire House Restaurant now and Brandon Central Fire Station then

Dinning with Style at Brandon Prairie Firehouse Restaurant , the former Brandon Central Fire Station. It is so delightful to see the successful transformation of an old historical heritage building into a modern fine dining house in downtown Brandon. I stopped by with my French easel at 4:30 pm today and left at 6:30 with this oil painting of it. Hopefully I did capture the endearing and cozy moment on a beautiful Saturday evening. It was almost exactly 25 years ago and in almost exactly same kind of warm wash of evening light, I stepped down a Greyhound Bus after so many hours of traveling from shanghai China all the way to Brandon Manitoba alone leaving the wife and two year old daughter behind for five years starting a lonely and adventurous journey that have totally changed my own life. To mark my 25th anniversary, here is the painting for today.

Ecole Secondaire Neelin High School Brandon Manitoba

École secondaire Neelin High School-- home of Spartans Brandon Manitoba early in the morning

A Stately Home in Brandon West early in the morning

the enchanting swinging bridge of Souris Maniotba in early summer

Next we stopped by the beautiful bridge and painted this view to my heart content!

The Dumbars Farm on a beautiful early summer morning in Souris Manitoba

Drove out to the farm to paint with their lovely dog greeting me.