Michaela Yearwood-Dan

For her first solo exhibition in China, British artist Michaela Yearwood-Dan presents RECESS, a new body of work that unfolds through gesture, rhythm, and reflection. The title suggests both a pause and a space—a moment of withdrawal that allows for renewal and a physical depth carved into surface and time. 

In RECESS, painting becomes a state of breath. Yearwood-Dan tilts, pours, and layers pigment directly onto canvas stretched across vast frames, and onto voile for smaller, more intimate works, allowing colour to flow and settle like water seeking form. These gestures—at once deliberate and instinctive—evoke the fluidity and discipline found in traditional Chinese calligraphy and movement practices such as Tai Chi, where stillness and motion coexist in harmony.

The word RECESS also gestures inwards: towards introspection, softness, and the private spaces within an artist’s practice. For Yearwood-Dan, the exhibition marks a moment of much needed lightness and playfulness—a pause between projects, a breath between worlds. Within this pause, she explores how cultural memory, perception, and embodied experience flow together through paint.

RECESS transforms the gallery into a contemplative environment reminiscent of a garden—a concept deeply rooted in Taoist, Confucian, and Buddhist philosophies—offering a space where colour, form, and movement invite the viewer to linger, reflect, and breathe.