Artist Lai Yuesen / 艾森丽画艺 (950074182): Hyperrealist Still Lifes Shaped by Patience and Light
A Chinese cabbage lies on an old dark table, nearly as big on the canvas as it would be in a kitchen. A dragonfly rests on the top leaf, a ladybird climbs the frilled edge of another, and a yellow chick stands at the end of the table looking up at it all. The painter sits close, a small brush held near the ferrule, working one ruffle of one leaf.
The Artist
赖跃森 — Lai Yuesen — is a hyperrealist oil painter from Fujian, who works through his own studio in Xiamen, 艾森丽画艺 (Aisenli Art). He describes himself in a single line: 热爱生活，热爱艺术 — love life, love art.
His favourite subject is the least glamorous thing in the market: cabbage. Around it come baskets of fruit, a steamed fish on a plate, antique porcelain, ducks on dark water, and now and then a portrait. All of it is painted in oil, slowly, at close to life size.
Why a Cabbage
In China a cabbage is never just a vegetable. 白菜, báicài, sounds close to 百财, “a hundred fortunes,” so the cabbage has been a good-luck symbol for centuries — in folk carving, in New Year prints, in jade. The most famous small object in Chinese art is a cabbage: the Jadeite Cabbage, carved so the stone’s white and green fall exactly where stalk and leaf should be, with an insect on one leaf.
So when Lai Yuesen paints a huge cabbage on a dark canvas and lands a dragonfly on it, he is stepping into the most loaded still-life subject his tradition has.
The Hardest Vegetable to Paint
He has also chosen something very hard to paint. A cabbage is a stack of thin, half-translucent leaves, often lit from behind, so the veins show as darker channels. One leaf runs from near-white at the stalk through yellow-green to deep green at the tip, all in one continuous surface. The edges are frilled, turning toward and away from the light dozens of times, so the outline is never a simple line. And the surface is faintly waxy, with a soft sheen and almost no sharp highlight to make it pop.
One Cabbage, From Canvas to Finish
The work starts on a large wooden easel with a crank, the canvas sitting above the same kind of old table the cabbage lies on. The big shapes go in first: the pale stalk, the masses of green, the dark ground. Then the long part begins. With a small brush he works leaf by leaf, building the green in thin layers — glazes of transparent color over a lighter underpainting — so that light seems to pass into the leaf and back out again. Each glaze has to dry before the next, which is why a painting like this takes weeks. One of his pieces took more than forty days.
The frilled edges are painted one buckle at a time, each with its own light side and its own small shadow on the leaf behind. Last of all come the visitors: the dragonfly’s glassy wings, the red-and-black ladybird, the soft yellow chick. When the brush is set down, the cabbage looks heavy enough to lift off the table.
Painted at Life Size
Next to his hand, the brush looks tiny — because the cabbage is about the size of a real one. That choice costs him more than any other. In a small painting, a crinkled leaf edge can be suggested with a wandering line, and the viewer’s eye fills in the rest. At life size there is no such help: every centimetre of edge can be seen, and every centimetre has to be painted. He chooses to be compared directly with the thing itself.
The Dragonfly and the Chili
He never leaves a cabbage completely alone. A dragonfly lands on one, a ladybird climbs another, a chick wanders in, tomatoes and radishes gather at the base, a single red chili hides behind a leaf. In a picture of greens, whites, browns and grays, that one small red does a great deal: it makes every green look greener, and gives the eye somewhere to rest.
The settings are deliberately plain: an old scuffed table, a dark rock, a warm gray or black background. No draped cloth, no shiny copper pot, nothing to hide behind. Every part of the picture the viewer looks at is something they have held in their own kitchen, so every part has to be right.
慢工出细活 — Slow Work, Fine Work
His own words keep returning to one idea. 慢工出细活: slow work makes fine work. 心不能浮躁 — the heart must not be restless; stay calm to paint each piece. 虽长平凡，落笔便是高级 — however ordinary the subject, the moment the brush lands it becomes something fine. And: every painting is like one of his own children. Given how glazing works, that patience is practical. A painter in a hurry puts the next layer on before the last has dried, and the picture turns muddy.
Fruit, Fish and Porcelain
A wicker basket of apples and oranges sits on a red table against black, a peeled tangerine beside it, every apple a slightly different red. A steamed fish lies on an oval plate under shreds of spring onion, in a pool of glossy red sauce; framed in dark wood, it hangs on a white wall like a banquet that never goes cold. Antique porcelain, red lacquer and citrus are balanced against the dark in the same careful way.
Ducks and a Boy by a Brick Wall
He paints movement too: a pair of ducks crossing dark water, their pale shapes repeating across the surface. And he paints people. One portrait shows a small boy in a yellow T-shirt sitting against a rough red brick wall, snack in his hands. It begins as a careful drawing on a toned canvas; the face is brought to life first, then the wall behind him, brick by uneven brick, until the boy sits in real warm light.
Three Cabbages
Three cabbages in one painting make repetition into a test: each head turns differently, so weight, leaf direction and veins must stay distinct without becoming a pattern. Two cabbages lying together on a carved table get the same treatment, with a dragonfly hovering above. His glass palette sits beside the easel heaped with mounds of color.
The Best State to Be In
Lai Yuesen has said that a person’s best state is to be in the studio painting, drinking tea and looking at pictures. His studio is plain — a wooden easel, a chair, a shelf, a plain wall — and there is no mystery on offer, only a man on a chair with a cabbage and a small brush, working slowly.
Picture the end of one of those long paintings: the last wing of the dragonfly finished, the brush laid down, and a cabbage on an old table that looks as if someone has just carried it in from the market.
See his work on Douyin: 艾森丽画艺 (950074182) · cabbage with a dragonfly and a chick · two cabbages · fruit basket · steamed fish · boy by a brick wall. All artwork and video © 赖跃森 / 艾森丽画艺, shown with credit.