All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
About the Artist
Madam. Fan Pu, former associate director of the Amity Christian Art Center, was born in Nanjing and grew up in a Christian home where her father the Rev. Fan was the pastor in the church and an artist well known for his calligraphy work.
At age 17, after graduating from middle school, in 1965, Fan Pu joined her Nanjing middle school classmates in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region to undertake agricultural work just before the Cultural Revolution.She familiarized herself with the life of simple people and their habit of giving each other self-made gifts. Fan Pu mastered this technique not only for making small presents, but also to propagate her Christian faith. After 14 years of farm work, Fan Pu returned to Nanjing with her two daughters in 1979. Before joining the Amity Art Center in 1993, Madam Fan worked for Nanjing Art Company. One of her special interests is papercut with biblical theme.
Fan Pu lost the opportunity for education in her young age and was not formally trained in art. But her years in Xinjiang helped develop her way of thinking. Her enduring and lifelong creativity in the art of papercut has made her one of the best known Christian artists of new China. She is a member of Asian Christian Art Association and her works have been exhibited in different parts of the world. She is considered one of the most important Chinese Christian papercut artists. Her recent published album is The Way of My Heart: The Papercut Art of Fan Pu by Nanjing Publishing House in 2010.