Artist lovers re-united across the seas

Caught in the fickle winds of political change in China, grand history painter Shen Jiawei left his country and family behind when he moved to Australia.

Shen Jiawei was a mural painter in China during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Lan Wan was a farmer in the north-east of the country, before going on to study, then teach, fine arts. As artists and painters, their parallel passions fanned the sparks of love when they met in 1975. In 1989, Shen – having created a work featuring problematic nationalist figures – left China for Sydney, leaving Lan, who was pregnant with daughter Xini, behind. It was several years before his wife and daughter could emigrate to join him. Shen began his Australian life sketching portraits amongst the pigeons at Darling Harbour in Sydney, later becoming one of Australia’s most important, and busiest, portrait painters.  Now settled in Bundeena in Sydney’s south, the pair frequently collaborate on epic paintings. Here Gary Grealy pays poignant tribute to their love and shared history.