Traditional and avant-garde, magnificent and fantastic, fancy and surreal, entering the world of Liu Tianlian is like twisting a kaleidoscope, where a splendid display of colors, lines and shapes lure "outsiders" to explore the Arcadia hidden in this female painter's vast, gorgeous art world and in her mild, low-profile real life.

With a unique "gardening" style, Liu's paintings boast a rhythm of cultural context, as she devotes all her understanding of life into her works.

"The pastoral life in my mind must be rich in colors. I don't like cloudy days, and I don't like rain, either. I prefer sunny days with sunshine, you know, the feeling of being exposed to the sunlight," said Liu.

According to Liu and her husband, who's also an artist, gardening is partly about gardening itself, and partly about rediscovering Chinese aesthetics.

"We both like gardening very much. Or in other words, we both like the aesthetics in Chinese tradition. In the past two years, I finished the four paintings called 'Four Seasons' and they're about classical Chinese gardens and ordinary people's life in China," Liu explained.

In carrying forward the traditional Chinese aesthetics, Liu has never stopped her own innovative attempts.

Backed by her professional academic background, she took advantage of her studies in Chinese painting at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and her own artistic practices to explore and create her own style, updating the techniques and aesthetics of traditional materials.

Liu demonstrated how she combines paper-cutting and painting to achieve a three-dimensional visual effect; she taped her papercut painting onto a special foundation, a huge piece of silk paper painted with mineral pigments. Silk paper was commonly used by ancient Chinese calligraphers and painters.

Western art, especially oil paintings, also has a profound impact on Liu's artistic exploration. Actually, the artist attributes her artistic enlightenment to be "basically related to oil paintings," adding that her attempts to blend Chinese and Western culture began in college.

"When I was in college, I started trying to integrate colors into my water and ink paintings, but the theme was still traditional, involving flowers, birds, fish and insects. I was always expected to use traditional techniques and materials to draw pictures that were actually different from traditional Chinese paintings. But slowly I started to integrate Western colors and compositions into my works, and then Western culture. My series 'A Tribute to Masters' is a good example. They are all iconic Western artists that I loved when I was a child," said Liu.

"Dali's Mouth," "Chagall's Wedding," "The World of Van Gogh," "The World of Schiller," "Frida and My Imagination" or "Frida in the Flowers"… what shines in these works are not only the sparks by the collision between East and West civilizations, but also the artist's natural expression from her own understanding about art.

"I think my art language is international. People in the world understand me when I use a universal language to tell them Chinese stories. Because when I share my paintings on Instagram, many overseas art lovers like and review," said Liu.

"I think it may take my whole life to create only a small hill of my own, but I will definitely not climb other people's great mountains," added the artist.