Alive here
Mixed medium on the paper, 105 × 85 cm, 2025
 
Artwork Statement
My work reflects on the emotional shifts that accompany the changing roles we move through in life. I am interested in how tenderness, sadness, intimacy, and vulnerability can be expressed through colour and gesture, especially in ways that feel immediate and deeply human.
In recent years, I have focused on painting figures, particularly women and men, as vessels for emotional atmosphere rather than fixed identity. More recently, I have begun using softer and brighter colours such as pink and yellow to create flickering surfaces that pulse like a beating heart. Through these tonal choices, I try to hold onto fleeting feelings that are difficult to articulate in words.
Within a fragmented and fast-moving world, painting offers me a way to slow down and stay with emotion. Rather than describing a single narrative, my work creates a space where sensation, mood, and human presence can emerge through colour. It is through this process that I continue to explore how art can preserve feeling beyond language
 
Artist Bio
Yoka Pan is a painter whose practice has been shaped by a longstanding engagement with art from an early age. Born into an artistic family in Shanghai, she studied at Shanghai Xingzhi Art Normal School, the Academy of Fine Arts at Shanghai University, and later Tama Art University in Japan, specialising in arts and crafts. Her works have been exhibited in galleries and exhibitions across China, Taiwan, Japan, and Australia.