Ms. Liang Dan Fong is one of the most outstanding painters, writers, and educators in Taiwan.  She was born into a family with a scholarly tradition in Nanjing, China in 1935, and moved to Taiwan in 1948.  

Growing up during World War II, walking more than 30 Li (a little more than nine miles) daily to escape the killing and bombing, she became brave, tough, and diligent.  She is self-taught though she did briefly attended art classes at the Hangzhou Academy of Art in postwar China, and in 1973 at St. John’s University in New York.  Her father, Ding-Ming Liang, is a highly respected artist famous for his paintings of historical events, landscapes, and horses, but he refused to teach her as it would be more beneficial to “learn and develop methods” on her own.   Henceforth, through strict self-discipline and hard work, she has mastered Chinese painting, calligraphy, literature, and Western techniques in representational style.

She was an Associate Professor of Fine Arts at both the College of Chinese Culture and the National Academy of Arts in Taiwan for more than 40 years.  Currently, she teaches at Ming Chuan University, Taiwan, and out of her own studio. As a prolific writer she was a regular columnist for Central Daily News, United Daily News, and many other newspapers in Taiwan.  She has published more than sixty books including “A Study of Stroke in Chinese Brush Work”, “My Beloved Homeland-China”, “Glory of Taiwan”, “Jordan as I See, the Land of Spiritual Wealth”, “Churches in Vatican”, … and others.  

Her entire artistic career spans more than 70 years and has held more than 200 solo exhibitions worldwide.  Her works have been collected by Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Berlin, Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna, Banque Indosuez, Switzerland, St. John’s University, and many others.  She has received many awards including the National Award for Arts, the National Medal for Arts, the Century Dragon Award, the Hiromichi Award, the highest cultural award in Taiwan — the National Cultural Award by Ministry of Education, and more than 10 distinguished awards worldwide.  She has been nominated ten times as an International Who’s Who of Authors and Writers.

Ms. Liang has been an early pioneer in keeping journals of both sketches and writings based on intuitive impressions and sharp observations during her travels  (which for her are more for learning and deep experience than for enjoyment). She has often been invited as a guest speaker on Chinese culture while demonstrating brush paintings which she considers to be an “international language” that can foster understanding and awareness.  She is greatly appreciated as an “unofficial ambassador for Chinese culture” and her demos are widely publicized on televisions, radios, newspapers, and magazines. She has traveled to many countries and places as remote and desolate as the glaciers at the North Pole and the deserts in Middle East and China.  By so doing she has also set a trend for women’s self-help travels around the world.

Her works are held in high esteem due to her command of both Chinese and Western techniques, concise, powerful, expressive brushstrokes, and a conveyed feeling that is both profound and heartfelt.  Her works are often regarded as having achieved a genuine synthesis between Chinese tradition and western techniques. Her watercolors demonstrate the utmost skill in commanding fluidity of water, interacting colors from a limited palette, and in applications of swift, spontaneous, confident brushstrokes.  Her works are the foremost examples in transparent watercolor tradition that is most difficult and demanding to achieve.

Most of her paintings and writings have been donated to National Central Library Archives in Taipei: http://ourartnet.com/LIANG.Dan-Feng.asp

Other sources of her works are listed below:
https://www.watchinese.com/article/2017/22780?page=show
https://www.etsy.com/shop/StarCloudArtGallery/items