The key issue in Chinese culture concerns, “How to be a real man”, and the relation among persons, the relation between man and nature. The aim of Confucianists is to be a sage or a benevolent person, that ...... to be a true man or a man wholly in harmony with nature.
Cheng Chaonan

By viewing the works of Li Meniu it is evident that he is truly in harmony with nature.

The beauty and the carefully controlled colour tones, dazzles the eyes. The constant visual information keeps the viewer mesmerized, intertwining their own personal emotions with Li Meniu’s subject matter “Nature”.

Li Meniu is an accomplished knife painter which has given him the confidence and understanding of shades and tones to enable him to fragment the landscape with minimum of effort to the basic and complex brilliance of colour. His art not only inherits the eastern traditions but also encompasses the influence of western traditions predominantly the modern impressionist’s style.

In contrast, European art was developed from the Greek and its main point, of how to understand the world. Socrates said, “Knowledge is the most beautiful thing” and Aristotle wrote that “people got their first knowledge from imitation”. This imitation theory of art was the most important in European art tradition. Li Meniu having been raised in a forest not only tries to imitate his life experiences, but portrays tranquil emotional feelings through the use of colour within his work.

The value of art is given by man, because art is a form which can fulfill human value. The human being realizes its own values more fully in an art which integrates in itself the merits of both East and West.
Transcending Figures;
Cheng Chaonan

Li Meniu was born in 1966, in Zhang Zhou, Fu Jain, China. He attended Fu Jain Normal University, concentrating exclusively in the Russian style. As a full-time professional painter, Li works in his own studio and corresponds frequently with other members of the Russian-trained Xian artist collective. Li Meniu is an elder in the Xian School; his role conveys his exceptional leadership qualities and his aberrant creativity.

His works have been collected by art lovers all over the world. His paintings are in many private and corporate collections.