Artist paints a picture of hope

Rural vistas and people's resilience key themes in impressive body of work.

Painter Shen Shihui, who was born in Tianjin, didn't visit his father's hometown in Tianping village, Xiuwu county, Henan province, until he was a middle school student in the 1970s. He was immediately impressed by the landscape, as the village was on the mountainside, and at the foot of the mountain, there was a running brook.

The village, located in the southern part of the Taihang Mountains amid steep peaks, trickling streams and luxuriant vegetation, boasts an excellent natural environment and cultural accumulation. Many painters and poets lived there in ancient times.

In the following several decades, he paid frequent visits to the village and surrounding places. They become a storehouse of inspirations, which have tremendously nurtured his creation as a painter.

Shen, 63, a professor at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, held an exhibition of his works at the National Art Museum of China in April. More than 120 traditional landscape paintings of his were on exhibit, showing the skills he has mastered over the years.

Among the paintings displayed were images related to his hometown, including one depicting spring in a village not far from it. Many villagers who lived in the mountains migrated to other places to work in the past. But in recent years, many of them have come back home to run homestays.

In one of the paintings, called Spring in a Mountain Village, Shen depicted changes in the lives of locals, including their newly renovated homestays, and the cars they can now afford. He also painted weeping forsythia, which blooms in early spring, and the crops on the mountains which are turning green, showing the vitality of the season.

"It shows the progress we have achieved in rural revitalization. The environment is getting better, and people live a better life without having to leave home," says Shen.