Abstract beauty: Artist combines poems and paintings

Women have a natural connection to art. Though their images and work were buried in past eras of male-dominated history, they can reveal their talents in today's world.

Among such female artists, many find more than one way to express themselves.

Li Youli, a Chinese woman, paints her inner world on and beyond the canvas. The painter also writes poems that echo her paintings.

Chinese ink painting has been connected with poems for thousands of years. Often, a poem was written on an artwork.

Li created paintings and poems separately, yet the two different forms beautifully convey the same message in her mind.

As an experienced artist of both traditional Chinese ink painting and oil painting, Li infused more Chinese elements into her oil works.

She applied techniques from Chinese frescoes into the oil painting and lets the works shine with gold powder.

Pieces of Chinese blue and white ceramics also appear in her paintings.

Art critic Rasko Radovic said Li's abstraction has its roots in both Chinese traditional painting and contemporary Western art.

"She has a great sensibility not only for colors, but also textures and materials that she employed in her art. And this is also a Chinese feature since no other art equals the Chinese art as far as sensibilities for materials , textures and surfaces are concerned," Radovic added.

The painter's poems also show her perspective on the world around her.

One of her poems, In Jiangnan, featurs the misty rain and clouds, which were taken as a metaphor of her feelings and thoughts about her previous and next lives. Through the words, readers can even feel the wetness and colors of the scenery.

"To understand Li Youli's work, you must need to observe, to listen and to feel by your heart," critic Guo Xiaochuan said.

The artist is now holding her third solo exhibition at the Shang Ba Art Gallery in Beijing from May 6 to June 10.

If you go:

May 6 to June 10, Shang Ba Art Gallery, 1/F, Shang 8 Culture Group Building. Yard 3, Xiadianjia Chaoyang district, Beijing.