Following brief stays in California, Missouri, Maryland and Syracuse, accumulating bits of money toiling at local Chinese restaurants, she enrolled at City College in New York City. To make ends meet she combined an accelerated class schedule with further grueling restaurant shifts, more than once falling asleep on the subway after midnight on the way back to her tiny Brooklyn rented room. One of her proudest moments was approaching the unsuspecting Genius Bar with a stack of crumpled five and ten dollar restaurant earnings to purchase her first Apple computer. Her life was hard, but she was heading in the right direction.  

       In the ensuing years, she took a more traditional path: graduation from college, U.S citizenship, marriage to an American, and motherhood. Her English improved, though like many native Mandarin speakers she still transposes "she's" and "he's," and she has morphed into a true idiosyncratic New Yorker. What hasn’t changed is her passion for art. Lirong experiments in representational, expressionist and abstract styles. She paints portraits, farmhouses and barns, Manhattan townhouses and Shanghai cityscapes. At heart, she is still the free-spirited girl who loves to draw. 

       The paintings displayed on this site are not Lirong’s final contribution. A searcher and perfectionist, she is always focused on the next project. We proudly offer print samples of her splendid works thus far along her artistic journey.