Landscape artist connects with nature through vivid use of color in a career spanning six decades, Lin Qi reports.

Shen Beixin, 91, who has worked with oil painting for decades, is hailed as a preeminent landscape artist of 20th-century China. His work is marked by a vibrant palette that accumulates rich layers on canvas and delivers a refreshing feeling.

He uses highly saturated blue to hail the pleasant sky in Qingdao, Shandong province. Even when he depicts barren branches of the Chinese parasol tree in winter, he adds strokes of blue, pink, yellow and other lighter shades to invigorate the composition.