Poh Ling Yeow

Poh Ling Yeow
Yeow at the InStyle and Audi Woman of Style Awards, May 2013
Born	Poh Ling Yeow 1973 Ampang, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Residence	Norwood, South Australia, Australia
Other names	Sharon Yeow
Citizenship	Australian
Education	Bachelor of Design
Alma mater	University of South Australia
Occupation	Artist
Title	Runner-up, MasterChef Australia (season 1)
Partner(s)	Jono Bennett
Website	pohlingyeow.com Poh & Co. Poh's Kitchen

Poh Ling Yeow (Chinese: 杨宝玲; pinyin: Yáng Bǎolíng; born 1973) is a Malaysian-born Australian artist, actress and runner-up in MasterChef Australia (series 1).

Born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia into a fifth-generation Malaysian Chinese family, Yeow attended SMK Convent Bukit Nanas. She immigrated to Australia at age 9 with her parents and brother, eventually settling in Adelaide, South Australia. After attending Seymour College and then the University of South Australia (where she earned a Bachelor of Design degree), Yeow worked as a graphic designer, illustrator and makeup artist.

Yeow's corporate clients as a makeup artist included L'Oréal and Attitude magazine, the Australian String Quartet and the short film my last ten hours with you. Her personal clients included Megan Gale and Lisa Ho. Freelance work as a makeup artist led to her preparing models for artist David Bromley, increasing her understanding of the art market. Yeow has acknowledged that she posed as a nude model for Bromley.

Yeow adopted the Western first name Sharon until age 25, but reverted to Poh Ling as a part of embracing her cultural heritage. She became a full-time professional artist in 2002.

Yeow works mainly with acrylic paint on canvas. Her early works featured heavily textured backgrounds whereas recent works present a smoother, more refined and highly detailed finish.

Elements of her Chinese heritage feature in her work, including the goldfish, a symbol of prosperity and good luck in Chinese culture. A recurring character in Yeow's recent work is one that she calls The Girl, who she refers to in the third person, although the character's facial features are clearly similar to Yeow's. She says "I guess [The Girl] was developed as a cathartic act, in terms of embracing everything that I did hate about myself physically: the broad nose, the Asian eyes, the broad face".