Li Jin has experimented with ink painting over the past few decades. He has started to employ massive brushstrokes in his creations. His solo show, titled Being, in Beijing displays his latest ink paintings. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Just like the show's name, Being, Li says he is following his heart to return to the point when he began painting in the Tibet autonomous region in the 1990s. His style today bears some resemblance to the works he did then.

After graduating from the Chinese painting department of the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in 1984, he spent a year in Tibet.

He went back to Tibet twice in the '90s and spent two years there. It's a place he says he felt "purity and calmness".

Some of his early paintings produced in Tibet are also on display at the Beijing show.

For years, art collectors have searched for their favorite items of food in Li's works. Now, it's perhaps time for him to go deeper instead of staying on the surface of "food and color".