Vast Grasslands, a traditional Chinese painting exhibition, will be shown at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing starting on Oct 27. The one-month show will display 15 elaborate paintings and 130 sketches, which were painted by Li Aiguo, a professor at the School of Art from Peking University.

Snow Dragon, one of the works on display, is Li's masterpiece. The painting, which took eight months to complete, shows 17 Mongolian horses in different positions.

Critics have written that Li's paintings, which are known for their power and grandeur, truly and profoundly display the living conditions of Mongolian people.

Li's works originate from his love for the grasslands. He began drawing Mongolian horses in the early 1980s and has insisted in working on that theme about six hours every working day in the past 30 years.

In order to study Mongolian horses, he has been to the Mongolian grasslands several times.

"My purpose is to find out their unique characteristics so as to make my work different from others," he said.

"Horses are a symbol of the Mongolian grasslands, which reflect the prairie's primitive massive area and grandness," Li said.

Li said that prairie life is his inexhaustible source of inspiration, and that the grasslands are a place where his artistic life lies in.

"When I stand on the grasslands, a gust of wind, sometimes, will blow an idea or an inspiration into my mind," he said.