The gorgeous hues, unbridled brush lines and sober compositions of woman artist Li Dongxia's works brighten the National Art Museum of China's exhibition hall.
One painting features a cloud-covered black cup, which rests quietly on a table. Inside the cup, scattered tealeaves languidly float on the brown watper's surface.
Another picture, mountains pile upon one another against the subdued backdrop of a blue sky. Thin white lines delineate the cottages in the foreground and separate the layers of the remote mountains.
One of the more striking paintings has the dim moonlight of midnight spilling through a window into a fishbowl. Everything is clad with ultramarine except for two small fish, which appear in black silhouette.
Li paints what she sees in real life according to intuition, using delicate strokes. Because her works are devoid of mood and personal emotion, they reflect a nave and simple character unique to her.
"It seems that painting is routine in Li Dongxia's life," says Fan Di'an, director of the National Art Museum of China.
"This ensures the artist expresses herself freely and intuitively."
Renowned art critic Jia Fangzhou says: "Li's paintings can create a kind of pure and natural experience, which could be associated to the Buddhist term 'pure land'".
The simple and honest style of Li's paintings is even more honed in her farmland depictions.
In the work Midday, Li employs fully saturated colors and strong brushstrokes.
Under the scorching sunshine of midsummer, a farmer leads an ox through a field.
The tableau is dominated by the vast yellow land, which extends into a distance of dazzling light. Dark-black pigment is used for the mountains on the horizon, the only tree - tucked in the corner - and the shadows the farmer, ox and tree cast upon the ground. White appears on the ox's body and in the remote sky, creating a strong contrastive effect representative of the season.
In other works depicting farmland, including Motionless Mountains and Enjoy the Cool Under the Shade of a Tree, realistic perspectives are expressed surrealistically.
9 am-5pm, today
National Art Museum of China, 1 Wusi Dajie, Dongcheng district
6401-7076
(China Daily January 4, 2009)
