Artist builds bridge with watercolors

A river view in Nanjing is depicted.

Salminen said the audiences for watercolor painting in China are growing and very strong, compared with the US.

"I really wanted watercolor artists in the US to realized how wonderful so many of the Chinese painters were and the high quality of the work they were doing because we don’t see very many examples of the work of contemporary Chinese painters here," said Salminen, who wrote a sixteen-page article about the Shanghai Biennial for a watercolor artists magazine.

“There are so many contemporary artists whose work I saw that were very impressive," Salminen said, naming as an example Liu Ye, one of the most influential Chinese watercolorists at work today.

"Shanghai claims to be the birthplace of Western-style watercolor painting in China," he said.

"But now we are being influenced by the Chinese, the Chinese artists have started entering work into competitive exhibitions here in the US recently and have been doing very well, gaining recognition," Salminen said

"I think as a result, we are now looking to China for influence much in the way that China is looking to the US as they developed their style of painting. So there is a lot of sharing now going on between China and the US, which I think is wonderful," Salminen added.