Angel Di Zhang is a painter and fine art photographer. She was born in Manchuria, China in 1976 and grew up in China, England, Canada and the United States. She was something of an art prodigy, studying under the grandson of one of Canada's famed Group of Seven painters, and had her first exhibition at the age of seventeen.

Angel’s art studies continued at Columbia University in New York City where she was chosen in 1995 as only one of two candidates that year for the accelerated BA/MIA program that concludes in the awarding of a joint Bachelor of Art as well as a Masters of International Affairs. This enabled the artist to simultaneously continue studying art and pursue her commitment to third world economic development and environmental work with the UN and other NGOs. A short career with the NYSE followed and she was often reminded that the artist Gauguin had previous life as a stock broker. She was heartened by this and resigned at the NYSE to paint full time. She lived two years in the Caribbean painting and learning about the colors and rhythms of native American art.

Angel Di Zhang is based out of Toronto and travels extensively, selecting and visiting new countries and experiencing them by immersing into the culture and re-emerging with new artwork. Her diverse travels have contributed to a worldview and an art that is inflected with the aesthetic of different cultures. Her works are held in corporate and private collections in six countries. She has exhibited in Canada, the USA, Puerto Rico, China, and Japan. Her most recent exhibitions were at the critically acclaimed Athens Institute of Contemporary Art in the USA and the Yamaguchi Biennial in Japan.

Angel Di Zhang is also a published writer. She is passionate about contributing to the artistic community and to the world at large through membership and contributions to the prestigious Arts & Letters Club of Toronto as well as other arts organizations and humanitarian NGOs

Artist's Statement: Vermillion Wings

I am a painter and photographer, each discipline informing the other. There are elements that they share in common such as composition and light, and there are elements that separate them such as the premeditation of painting versus the singular moment of photography.

To be a dreamer is to look at the world differently. It is to close your eyes every now and again and clear your mind, then open your eyes and see the world as if you have never seen it before. Dreamers search for and see beauty where others see only the mundane.

To be an artist is to share the dreamer’s vision with everyone.

Vermillion Wings are multimedia works, they are sculptures and photographs and paintings. They begin life as sculpture, found or created metal surfaces that have been exposed to natural elements and time and acid. They continue life as photographs.. They mature further as paintings, digitally and physically altered and painted. Some reach the end of their lives full circle and become sculptures of light, printed onto Lexan and backlit so that they glow from within.

As the process defies definition, the images strive for the same. Rust? Yes, certainly they are of rust. But stop reading and look. A drop of water falls from the sky and where it hits the layers of paint open like the wings of a butterfly, and underneath the vermilion rust emerges.