Zhou Bao Jian (born in 1947 in Shanghai, China)

Zhou Bao Jian was admitted to the Shanghai Fine Arts Academy in 1964. Upon graduation in 1968 he was retained by the Academy as a faculty member. In 1979 he became the deputy dean of the Department of Oil Painting. In 1984 he went to study at he Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts with a full scholarship and graduated with honors in 1988. He won five major prizes including Creson, Quaker, Sbath Louis Estelle and Historic Yellow springs. The highest honor Creson, afforded him the opportunity to visit and study in Europe, which provide very beneficial to his artist growth. Upon his return from Europe he continued his creative development and studies at Pafa. In 1990 he made his home in New York and established the Center for Artistic Creation. His study at Pafa was a turning point in his artistic career. Pafa is a prestigious institution of high education in arts with a long history and an excellent faculty. Master painters such as Thoms Eorkis and Mary Casata were graduates of the university. At Pafa Zhou Bao Jian also met some highly accomplished contemporary artists, such as Richard Estes and Wolfkahn, and was exposed to different schools of artistic works. All this was of great importance to him. While he gained certain attention in the Chinese artistic community and was on the faculty of a famed university, he felt he was restrained in techniques by his environment at the time and was unable to break away from the realistic techniques. The artistic mood in China was distorted and deeply impacted by the Soviet doctrine of realism and the Cultural Revolution. At Pafa he took lessons from eminent professor such as Sidney Goodman, Daniel D. Miller, Jimmy C. Lueders and Bruce Samuelson. Under their tutelage he created a series of paintings of human body and landscape that represented his love for life and nature. Adopting the impressionistic technique that alternates variations of light and shadow, he broke from his former artistic style in subject and technique and developed his own style. His works " The Lady by the Window", "The Bridge", "Sleeping Figure", etc. won him prizes as well as approval from his professor. In recent years he has on many occasions held art shows at the Academy Museum and galleries Asia and the united States. His painting have earned him growing praise, and many of them have been acquire by collections.