Guan Yanfei invites light into her paintings. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Last summer Zhong Baoxian, a longtime student from Lijuan Art, was enrolled by Pratt MWP College of Art and Design in the United States. "My daughter is too free-spirited to be categorized," says Li Xiurong, Zhong's mother. "She found her own place at Lijuan Art."

Wang Wei, who graduated from the oil painting department of Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, says he was once taught an important lesson by a fellow student at the college.

"She rarely attended classes yet was always able to come up with something truly different," he says. "Later she won top prize in a painting competition in which we all took part. A professor I admired told me that she won because 'her painting is noble'."

"I didn't understand what he meant until many years after I went into children's art education. Being noble is a quality that stems from freedom of the heart and is nurtured by, among other things, the sheer joy of encountering beauty.