Between Ink and Breath

Professor Nan Liu’s art carries the discipline of Chinese brushwork and the boldness of the American classroom, meeting somewhere in the space between.

As featured in KAILON Magazines Fall/Winter issue “The December Edit”

The walls of Professor Nan Liu’s office seemed to breathe. Paintings, portraits, ink studies on rice paper, climb from floor to ceiling like living testimonies. Every inch is occupied, the quiet storm of a life spent translating his version of the world through brush and color. In his office and in spaces across Florida A&M University, there are glimpses of Tianjin, where he was born and first learned to draw, there are faces of his students at Florida A&M University, rendered life-size in oil. The effect is overwhelming and intimate all at once, one man’s lifelong conversation with art, unfolding in layers of ink and memory.

“I just draw and draw,” he says with a modest laugh, as if that simple truth could contain the decades behind it. “That’s my life.”

Jeromai, Ink and Color on Xuan paper, 27x54", 2023

Liu’s journey begins in Tianjin, one of China’s largest and most storied cities. At sixteen, he was named Young Artist of Tianjin, a title that came with both local prestige and the kind of validation a young dreamer never forgets. “That was a big city,” he recalls. “My drawing was in the newspaper. My art teacher, she was so proud. I gave the certificate to her, and she displayed it in the art room. Later, the school invested more in art because of that.”