Zhai Yuefei, a famous painter in China, is interviewed in his studio in Beijing. [Photo/China Tibet Online]

"If you haven't been to Tibet, you dream for this holy place; if you are in Tibet, you hesitate to leave it; if you have left Tibet, you wish to come back again", this is what most people think about Tibet.

The same comes to the famous Chinese painter Zhai Yuefei, who has held his first individual painting exhibition in Beijing recently to mark his best time and most cherished memories in Tibet.

Titled "In Tibet and not", the exhibition displays the painter's works done both in Tibet and beyond it during the past 15 years. A coincidence occurs that his works mark the 15 years he had spent in Tibet in his youth.

Zhai Yuefei recalled his past days in Tibet and shared his stories with reporters from China Tibet Online.

Choosing Tibet to start his dream

In 1983, Zhai Yuefei graduated from the Arts Department of Shanxi University at the age of 21. When everyone thought that he would join the faculty in the university, he resolutely decided to go to Tibet though.

A strong aspiration in Zhai Yuefei's heart was to express the artistic temperament of Tibet under the influence of the wide spread western techniques of painting and the "Tibetan paintings" by famous painter Chen Danqing in 1980.

In Tibet, he was wholly shocked by the religion, culture, architecture and so on there. During his work in the Tibet People's Publishing House, he often wandered around Tibet and sketched from nature with Han Shuli, now secretary-general in Tibet branch of Chinese Artists Association.

At the same time, he began to express his feelings of culture and life in Tibet through canvas painting. When the Art Nouveau Movement occurred in 1985, he joined in and finished a series of painting concerning Tibet with other four painters. They discussed and debated on art; meanwhile they were touched and inspired by Tibetan art. The works created at that period were collected in Modern Chinese Art History.

Tibet gave Zhai Yuefei endless power to pursue his dream of art, therefore he finished large amount of paintings with unexhausted inspirations during the 1990s.