George Chann was born in Guangdong Zhongshan in 1913 in China. He immigrated to the US at the age of 12 with his Chinese medicine practitioner father while his mother and younger brother stayed behind. This situation was very similar with that of Yun Gee, who was also from the same hometown. Gee was senior to Chann by 6 years; documents and records suggested that they knew each other and were friends. In 1934, Chann was accepted into Otis Art Institute in LA with full scholarship and had outstanding performances. By then there were no more than 3 Chinese in the institute. Chann later taught at the same school and won much respect from his contemporary. In the early 20th century the American society was still discriminative of ethnicity. However, the prominence of Chann won him recognition at that time. During wartime he not only sold his works to raise funds for the overseas Chinese community but provided service to the Special Service Division of the American Army. He painted portraits of presidents and leaders of war; he was even awarded honorary medals for his contribution. In the early stages of his art career, Chann preferred depicting African Americans, Asians or the old and poor. He had been pious throughout his life, demonstrating his humanitarian concerns. His early paintings were post-impressionist and expressionist. In 1942, his expertise and command were highly praised by Roland Mckinney, the curator of LA Fine Art Museum. He also won the first place in the annual exhibition of Otis Art institute with his oil paintings.

Chann excelled and had an outstanding artistic achievement with portraits, the considered most difficult sort of painting. In 1947, he was invited back to China and stayed for about 3 years, during which he mainly lived in HK and became friends with prominent figures of the Lingnan school such as Chao Shao-an and Huang Chun-pi. He had hundreds of oil and water color paintings during this period of time and held exhibitions in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong. It was after he returned to the USA that he started the experiment going from concrete to abstract art. In the latter stages of his life, he used to have interviews taken for oral history by scholars in south California. One excerpt recorded the reason for this change; that, He started to learn western paintings in the beginning. In the early years, he liked to paint poor people, old people and children. After he came back from China he found the art work was changed. It was modernized. He tried to read the books and make his paintings change from old fashioned to modern. The modernization referred to by the artist was the Abstract Expressionism, which culminated in the 1950s in the USA.