Quotes from Lao Mai:
I grew up between California and New York, but I began painting more intensely after moving to China. I had a studio in 798 in Beijing and another in the basement of a church in Seattle—which, at the time, was a major music studio central to Seattle’s music scene—where I played in an improv music group in which I was a singer and played guitar.
I get inspiration from others like Bob Dylan, Picasso, Shostakovich, Max Planck, and Buster Keaton, and whats going on around and inside of myself.
I received 160,000 votes for “Tether Ball”, one of ten paintings I exhibited in Nanjing at a major international art show in China. It won the People’s Choicer Award. My paintings were the only ones by a foreign artist featured alongside Chinese artists on the first floor of the exhibition hall. While most were invited to show only one or two works, I was asked to show ten. Nice!
They made a thick hardback book of the show’s art and included all ten of my paintings. I think I have three or four copies.
I’ve gifted a few pieces to people who’ve helped me or helped the world. I gave a couple to a friend who founded the first private bank in China and let me use Ai Weiwei’s studio in Beijing for much of a year. I also gave one to a man who hosts one of the most important salons in China, where artists, intellectuals, business leaders, actors, and athletes gather. It was beautifully framed and hung in the main dining room for a long time—but the last time I visited, it was gone. I guess he either put it away or sold it.
It’s cool that a lot of people who see my paintings really like them.
You can tell I care by looking at the work
I can spend an hour or more in front of a single painting at a museum. I often lose the people I came with—or they get pissed off because I won’t move on.
I’m lucky to be friends with some amazing artists around the world.
A few of my closest friends, who were amazing, died in the last few years. I miss the martinis and painting sessions with them, in their studios or mine.
– Lao Mai
Lao Mai Art 