Cai Jin

Cai Jin (; born 1965) is a Chinese painter best known for her oil paintings of the banana plant. Cai was born in Tunxi, Anhui Province, China in 1965. Cai studied art at the Anhui Teachers University in Wuhu, China, graduating in 1985. She went on to participate in the Advanced Oil Painting Program of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, where she studied until 1991. She worked in New York between 1997 and 2007. Cai teaches at Tianjin Fine Arts Institute in Tianjin, China. Cai Jin has been featured in articles for the ArtDaily and The Brooklyn Rail. 
Works.
Cai Jin was inspired by a wilting banana plant that she discovered on a visit to her hometown in China. She took two rolls of photographs of the plant growing among weeds, and carried them with her for inspiration. For the next twenty years these remained her focus. Cai Jin has completed more than 400 works, mostly oil paintings. Her work is characterized by its psychedelic colors, such as pink, purple, blue, and especially red. Jin uses the image of the banana plant in her work to explore beauty, fertility, and sexuality. While she has primarily produced oils on canvas, Cai has painted on such materials as mattresses, silk quilts, cushions, women’s shoes, bicycle seats, and bath tubs. Her paintings explore vitality and beauty.
In 2008, Cai deviated from her focus on the banana plant and began work on a series of landscape paintings. While the title of the series is "Landscape" the paintings are lyrical and organic, showing influences of both Western and traditional Chinese sources. These are evocative of submarine landscapes or cloud-filled skies and verge on abstraction, but without totally abandoning their origin in the world around her.
External links.
Cai Jin at the Tate
Cai Jin at Blouin Artinfo 