Ying Li seamlessly merges structure and improvisation in the treatment of her subjects, which are rural landscapes — fields, mountains, rivers, and trees. The paint is applied thick with all kinds of instruments, from different-sized brushes to direct squeezes from the tube. The surfaces are built as dense as stucco. A wide sweep of striated paint moving across the surface reveals its inner colors, like a roughly surfaced stone.

Absorbing lessons from Vincent van Gogh, Li uses the direction of the brushstrokes to convey motion, the continuously changing landscape, and the world in constant transformation.