Art perfected through life experience

"I sometimes see myself as a poet trapped in visual expression," He told the media before the opening. Though he has never composed a single line of poetry, He has been fascinated by modern poetry since the 1980s and has created many paintings based on poems that touched him.

One of his most celebrated creations, The Crow Is Beautiful, was inspired by a stanza from Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, a poem by American poet Wallace Stevens.

"There are communities of the Yi ethnic group where I grew up," He explained as he guided a group of journalists through the exhibition preview. "There was a special sense of serenity in these people. I remember seeing them sitting quietly undisturbed for a long time."

The Crow Is Beautiful is a portrait of an ethnic Yi woman in subdued color tones, her form painted in a flattened perspective with a black crow flying over her head. Wang Wei, director of the Long Museum, bought the piece at an auction in 2012 from an overseas collector, making it one of the highlight pieces at the museum.