METAL WONDER: The copper sculpture,The Knight, received the silver award in the Southeast Asian Sculpture Exhibition in 1987 (COURTESY OF LIU YIGANG)

In the late 1990s, Liu quit his stable and well-paid job, and devoted himself whole-heartedly to art. Liu specialized in making sculptures and statues with metals, such as iron, steel, and copper. In Liu's hands, no matter what the theme is, doves, cranes, horses or abstract shapes, all of his statues possess a modern beauty. One of his metal statutes, The Knight, won the silver medal at the Southeast Asian Statute Exhibition in 1987.

"The use of metals is one of the brilliant achievements of human civilization. At present, newly emerged materials and technology inspire artists to further promote the development of metal sculpture," Liu said.

Liu's sculptures have been collected by museums and individuals across the country.

A New Career

Although he had achieved success in sculpture in the past, in 2000, Liu decided to do something he had never done before, and began to shift his focus toward painting. "After all, painting and sculpture are interlinked," he said.

Liu started painting and public figures are often the themes of his paintings.

The first and most popular series of Liu is four portraits entitled Love Letter which reveals the painter's incisive interpretation of love.

The figures he painted are: Wang Luobin (1913-96), a renowned songwriter; Eileen Chang (1920-95), a legendary female writer; Sanmao (1943-91), a Taiwanese author who travelled across the world; and Steve Jobs (1955-2011), the late Apple Inc. boss. From Liu's perspective, they represent four kinds of love between men and women: bitter love, wrong love, crazy love and true love.

"I chose them as the main characters because their lives were inscribed by the four different loves," Liu said to Beijing Review at his apartment in Beijing. "And people have come to know their love stories through the love letters they left."

In order to better display the uniqueness of each figure, Liu adopted some pop art techniques, such as setting different backgrounds for each figure. For example, Jobs was painted wearing a pair of apple-shaped sunglasses. The portrait of Eileen Chang was framed in an old black-and-white photo to show her elegance and beauty.

TRUE LOVE: Steve Jobs is another figure in the Love Letter series (COURTESY OF LIU YIGANG)	WRONG LOVE: Eileen Chang, is one of the four figures in the Love Letter painting series (COURTESY OF LIU YIGANG)

The most prominent feature of the Love Letter series is that people can read some segments of the love letters on the pictures. Liu took some excerpts of their love letters and wrote them on the faces of figures. "I used Chinese characters and English letters to constitute the portraits," Liu said. "People can learn more information about the figures' love stories from the paintings."

"Liu's paintings are distinguished from other portraits in galleries. Viewers can see free style in the pictures. The painter doesn't limit himself to conventional patterns, but adds unique and new techniques to the paintings," said Geng Youzhuang, an art critic and professor at Renmin University of China.

Although Liu has received praise from experts and netizens, he doesn't intend to relax. He said he would be busy with preparations for new paintings and a nationwide itinerant exhibition this year. "For me, it is just the beginning of my painting career. I must seize the time to fulfill my dream," Liu said.

Email us at: baishi@bjreview.com