I was born in 1963 and now live in the bustling city Beijing, China.
Even as a child I had loved to draw and I became fascinated with painting in high school. I never attended any art school. My initial attempts at self-learning focused on trying to replicating masterpieces of famous artists. Early in my career, my drawing style was deeply influenced by Chinese watercolors and ink paintings. Later I drew inspiration from exhibitions of traditional Chinese painting at the Forbidding City. I was attracted by landscape painting that used strong black lines, ink wash, and sharp, dotted brushstrokes to reflect the towering mountains and rocks in Northern China, and by the softer and rubbed brushwork to present the rolling hills and rivers of peaceful countryside in Southern China. I was also interested in the painting of delicate flowers and birds with fine brushes.
Since China adopted an open policy in 1978, I had more and more opportunities to see painting from Europe and America, and absorbed knowledge from different styles of painting, including classicism, impressionism, abstraction, expressionism, realism and even pop art. I have come to appreciate that creation is truly the soul of art.
In 1996, I happened to read a book about existence of fractal geometry of nature. I was mesmerized by the pictures of fractal patterns created by computer algorithms. Although generated by mathematical calculations, the images conjured leaves, branches, trees and forests from the set of ¡°Julia¡±. I could see endless flower, water waves, clouds, and nebulae from a set of ¡°Mandelbrot¡±, dreamlike and fantastic images created from magical mathematic formulas. In the same year I acquired my first computer. I became enamored with the magic of Photoshop, especially the build-in filters based on mathematics. With those filters I was able to create a variety of my own digitally styled brushes that bridge the gap between the traditional and digital painting. This artistic medium created a new outlet for artistic self-expression. With these unique brushes, I was able express my feelings though imagines created from my own emotional formulae. In the words of Pablo Picasso, I now ¡°painted objects as I thought about, not as I see them¡±.
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