“You cannot force someone to be an artist.”
Shanghai-born visual artist Li Huayi said that to Hong Kong-based journalist Kate Whitehead in an interview for the South China Morning Post.
Li, 68, who relocated in San Francisco, California, in 1982, flew to Hong Kong for the first time for “Exotica: Latest Works of Li Huayi,” on view at the Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery in Central.
At 6, his father brought him to Wang Jimei, a distant relative, to learn painting. And he did so for 10 years.
“I started learning by drawing simple lines, a simple bamboo leaf,” he told Whitehead.
His hand now creates “masterful landscape portraits of mountains, trees and misty vistas,” said Dutch-born, London-based art dealer Michael Goedhuis on his website.
Goedhuis described Li’s works as “rich, detailed and powerful in their ability to capture an ancient world in hues of brown, grey, green and black.”
Artsy, an online resource for art collecting and education, said on its website that Li “fuses a traditional Chinese painting style with modern American abstraction to create ethereal, misty landscapes.”
When 20 of his paintings got displayed in Europe for the first time, Souren Melikian, in a 2007 New York Times article, said that the event “is bound to be remembered as a historic landmark.”
A protégé of Chinese artist and sculptor Zhang Chongren (1907-1998), where he learned Western art theory and practice, Li creates works that can sell for a cool million dollars and can even fetch higher than that.
Li’s “Immoral Mountain-Pureland Streams” (ink on paper) was one of the artworks presented as part of the group show, “A Private Journey,” at Gallery 100 in Taipei from May 16 to June 7, 2015.
It carries a price tag of $400,000 to $500,000, according to Artsy.
Gallery 100 already sold some of his works.
Someone purchased “Cliff in the Mist” (ink on paper, 2014) for $750,000 to $1,000,000. Waiting for a buyer is a 2015 creation worth $1 million to $1.5 million.
According to Goedhuis, two of the prominent buyers of Li’s works included the Robert Ho Foundation and Taiwanese-born American businessman Jerry Yang, co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo!
For those who will see Li’s works for the first time, KQED Arts reminded on its website: “Although Li Huayi’s paintings appear to be classical paintings, they are actually contemporary artworks that are made in the style and tradition of Chinese landscape paintings using traditional materials, subjects and compositions.”
People can view “Exotica: Latest Works of Li Huayi” until May 21.