Jian Yao is a painter born in China. He studied oil painting at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts before moving to Singapore in 1998 to further his studies at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. After obtaining two diplomas in Fine Art and Western Painting from the institution, he joined the academy as a full-time lecturer in Fine Art from 2001-2019.

After Rain is a drawing completely rendered by hand in pencil on paper. What we basically take for granted is the geometric perspective created in the space through lines in the artwork and through the forms of the pillar, scupper drain and roof pipe. A drawing, even if copied from an image or from space, needs to recreate its own space in the most accurate way to help us perceive the subject clearly. The monochromatic rendering employed by Jian Yao combines a variety of scumbling, stippling and blending to create shade and light. The result is not to give us a three-dimensional form but actually to recreate how light accentuates surfaces wet after rain. An evidently dry technique in pencil shading creatively saturates our visual field with a unique sheen, as seen on the pavement right in the foreground before the scupper drain grating.