Artist Xing Qingren back in spotlight after 30 years

Three decades ago, Xing Qingren, hailing from Shaanxi province, rose to fame for his colored ink painting, Rosy Memories, which won the gold prize at the seventh National Fine Art Awards and Exhibition. But then he shunned the spotlight and focused on his works.

Unlike many of his contemporaries who moved to Beijing for a better career prospect, Xing has been living in and traveling across his native province. He creates landscapes of the Yellow Plateau and portraits of people, mostly villagers -- he himself was raised up in a rural family.

Xing named the title of his first solo exhibition now on at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, "I Came From Chang'an" to express his deep love of the land he was born into.

The exhibition through Aug 25 shows dozens of his ink paintings in which Xing profiles the inner world of people living in the extensive northwestern region of China: straightforward, honest and simple.

"I've never stopped working. I've been in the pursuit of the truth of life, the art and the identity of myself," Xing said.

"Life is meaningful only when people stop hiding and pretending, and accept their own true faces, for truth is the bones and souls of all art."