09/02/2026
Grace Tao's The Engine Dreams in Flowers brings natural forms into conversation with engines, gears, and other structures made by hand.
Tao's painting practice considers the poetic relationship between organic life and human-made systems. The work does not ask us to choose nature or technology; it lets the two dream beside one another. See it in First Light at CICA Vancouver.
p1. The Engine Dream In Flowers; Acrylic on Canvas; 43 x 36 in;
I am drawn to things that seem opposite at first: flowers and engines, softness and machinery, freedom and discipline, the organic and the constructed. In my work, petals wrap around gears, blossoms emerge from engines, and mechanical parts begin to feel alive. I see these contrasts not as conflicts, but as forms of coexistence. I often work with images of motorcycles, cameras, watch parts, engines, wood, flowers, and leaves. These objects carry different kinds of memory. Machines suggest movement, structure, labour, precision, and human ambition. Flowers suggest fragility, growth, beauty, and time. When I combine them, I am interested in creating a space where strength becomes tender and tenderness becomes powerful. The process often begins with observation, then moves into imagination. I build textured surfaces with acrylic and develop the final image through layers of oil paint, allowing colour, line, and form to shift between reality and dream. As an immigrant artist living in Canada, I often think about adaptation and transformation.
Grace Tao is a Vancouver-based Canadian painter who was born
and raised in China, Tao began drawing at a young age. She first completed
studies in Engineering and Economics before immigrating to Canada, where
she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montreal,
majoring in Painting and Drawing and minoring in Computer Art.
