For the past 50 years, Chinese ink artist Lin Feng has lived in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. The people and culture of the area has had a major impact on him.

Lin's show, Chinese Painting of Portraits, at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, displays 80 of his artworks based on people living in the northwestern region and in East China's Fujian province, his hometown.

The 77-year-old artist has spent most of his adult life in Xinjiang.

"I was inspired by the magnificent Tianshan Mountain, the Gobi Desert, the vast grasslands and the pastoral areas, especially the people living there," he says of the different Chinese landscapes that feature in his work.

Lin has sketched dancing Uygur women in colorful folk dresses and young men singing as they carry plates of grapes or melons on their heads.

Fan Di'an, president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, says that one can hear the music and feel the passion of dance from Lin's paintings.

After graduating from an art academy in southern Fujian's Xiamen in 1961, Lin, who was then 23, went to Xinjiang, hoping to learn from Huang Zhou, a master Chinese painter.

It took Lin 27 days on trains and buses to reach Xinjiang, which was a remote place at the time.

Lin, however, was warmly welcomed by Uygur, Kazak and other local ethnic groups. Because Lin was unable to speak any local language, many people volunteered to translate for him. They took melons to the artist so that he could eat while painting. Young girls waited in line to be his models for portraits.

"I could paint as many as 80 sketches in a single day then," recalls Lin, adding that he was charmed by the passion and vigor of the ethnic groups.

Lin was so fascinated with the bright and colorful scenery and the people, he decided to stay on in Xinjiang.

Many other artists have failed to capture the real essence of the place and its people through paintings, Lin says. The facial features of Uygur women in artworks, for example, are often not quite right, he says.

"It requires a lot of study and watching people closely to paint figures well," he says.

During his 50-year stay in the region, Lin has visited valleys, snow-capped mountains, grasslands and places off the beaten track. He made friends with the local people and was invited to stay with them.

"I was born in Fujian, but Xinjiang is the place that cultivated my soul and inspired me to never stop painting."

If you go 9 am-5 pm, through June 1. National Art Museum of China, 1 Wusi Street, Dongcheng district, Beijing. 010-6400-1476.