From Marianne North, the British botanic artist who traveled the world painting plants in the 19th century, to Georgia O'Keeffe, the US artist known for her bold, modern depictions of flowers, women artists around the world have often turned to plants and flowers as a means of portraying their experience and innermost worlds.

This is also the case with Xu Dongqing, who paints in the flower-and-bird style of classic Chinese painting.

Bodhi Leaf, her ongoing exhibition at the China National Academy of Painting, is a world of animation, enriched by her travels and research into artistic traditions.

They convey her emotional response to journeys to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and immersion in the work of Su Shi, the great Song Dynasty (960-1279) poet.

Xu Lian, the curator of the exhibition, says that while Xu Dongqing reaches one hand to the roots of her culture, but is also nurtured by great literary works from Walt Whitman to Tagore, all of which lends her work a more modern sensibility.

The artist says that whether the lives that inspire her to paint are big or small, significant or not, they are expressions of exuberance derived from creativity.