Uplifting force

Born into a poor family in rural Hunan province in 1966, Wang Liuyun is the fifth child. She has three sisters and a brother. Her father was born with a deformed spine, for which she was laughed at and mercilessly teased in school.

Although good at study, she dropped out of senior middle school at 17, because the family could not afford the expense. She had to take various jobs to feed herself.

When she was in her 20s, her parents died, which meant that she had to find someone to marry to make life easier. She met her first husband, who died in a car accident when their daughter was 7.

Four years after her husband's death, she and her daughter moved to a coastal village in Zhejiang, where she met her second husband, "who gives me the spiritual freedom that I want", she says.

For Wang Liuyun, who says she tends to feel lonely, her "soul mate "has been books. While in Zhejiang, whenever she had time, she would go to the local library and read voraciously, including Tang Dynasty (618-907) poems by Li Bai and Du Fu, as well as Russian literary classics.

When she first started learning how to paint, she was fascinated by Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains, a famous landscape painting created by Huang Gongwang in the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368).

She even went to the Fuchun Mountains in Zhejiang to appreciate the scenery, but found that the mountains were not as splendid as depicted in the painting.

"It was the moment that I realized what Huang painted was a scene in his dreams," Wang Liuyun says.

It is also why she has been fascinated by painting, which she sees as an escape from reality and a tool to help people to heal.

"I make a living in the dirt, but I paint in the clouds," she says.