Years Within the Scroll

Title:​ Years Within the Scroll — Le Venezie International Watercolor Festival Overall Second Prize ($800)

Artist:​ Chen Yuanyang (China)

Dimensions:​ 75 × 63 cm

Year:​ 2024

Medium:​ Transparent Watercolor

About the Artist

Chen Yuanyang is a Chinese watercolor artist whose work draws deeply on the visual and philosophical traditions of Chinese culture. Years Within the Scroll evokes the imagery of the classical handscroll — that most intimate of Chinese pictorial formats, designed to be unrolled slowly, revealing time and narrative in sequence rather than at a single glance. Through the translucent layering of transparent watercolor, Chen distills the passage of time into form and light, creating a work that is at once rooted in cultural memory and entirely contemporary in its sensibility. His painting reflects a sustained engagement with the relationship between ink-based Eastern aesthetics and the Western watercolor tradition — a dialogue that has come to define some of the most compelling voices in Chinese watercolor art today.