Wu Qiang, born in Changding, Fujian province, began a successful career as a painter even before graduating from the Chinese Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, where he received both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in the Department of Traditional Chinese Painting. Early accolades, including an Award of Excellence in the “The Second National Chinese Painting Exhibition,” Dalian, 2003, were followed by inclusion of Wu’s paintings in exhibitions in Hangzhou, Ningbo, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Hong Kong and Tokyo. In 2008 Wu had his first solo exhibition, in Beijing, and since then has had one-man shows in China and Japan. Here, a mountainscape seems to drift into being as the fluid pigments find their place on the soft silk and force the stark black pines tightly against the picture plane. The human occupants are spirited into this dreamlike environment, where images from nature and the formalism of art are so powerfully combined.