For painter and art educator Martin Wehmer, his turning point came in 2008, the year when he came to Beijing as a resident artist with an art grant from Switzerland. Since then, he has been painting in China, which, as he puts it, "gives me a special situation, between two worlds, more and more independent from where I come from".

As an artist who has been focusing on painting and different culture and art history, he considers art in his home country, Germany, "a little bit slow now and something is missing".

"Beijing is a great place for the production of art and painting. It gives me the freedom to do things, to take more risks. Somehow we all are working for the future of art," says the 48-year-old Wehmer from Hettingen, Germany.

In his ongoing exhibition held at Beijing's Being 3 Gallery in the 798 art zone, he is displaying 18 paintings, two of which he created in 2011, while the remainder were painted in 2013 and 2014.

He draws a parallel between painting and gardening, in the sense that he needs to tend to his work almost every day in his studio as gardeners would their plants in a garden. When he arrived in Beijing, contemporary art was booming, he says, but has now calmed down and galleries are focusing much more on long-term quality.

IF YOU GO

Feb 18 to March 22

Being 3 Gallery, 10th Square, 797 Road, 798 art zone, 2 Jiuxianqiao Lu (Road), Chaoyang district, Beijing. 010-5978-9875.

High teathe Chinese way	Turning the corner on lively discussion