Lu Yining always felt like a butterfly specimen trapped in a glass jar: raised amid the praise her talent earned, yet never able to touch the real world.
From dazzling her teachers with crayon doodles in her elementary school textbooks to holding a solo art exhibition in high school that caused a sensation throughout the city, the watercolor landscapes and charcoal portraits she painted always captured the spirit of light and shadow with pinpoint accuracy. Even the most exacting professors at art academies marveled that "heaven itself had spoon-fed her."
But whenever she stood in her studio, its floor covered in sheets of paper, and looked at paintings so perfect they seemed printed, an empty echo would rise in her chest. She knew these technically brilliant works lacked something: a burning, vivid soul.
Then, one drizzly afternoon during plum rain season, she turned a corner in the city art museum and came face-to-face with The Drowned Ophelia.
Lead-gray waves engulfed a twisted hull, while dark red ribbons wound around the broken mast like the blood vessels of a deep-sea monster.
So unlike every other work in the gallery, the painting burned itself into her retinas with its rough palette-knife textures and almost insane colors.
Staring at the painting, Lu Yining suddenly realized that what she had spent years searching for was this very vitality, the kind that could scorch her fingertips.
Theme: The warmth of life is the fuel of artistic creation
