Freedom.	Venetian Sunset.	The Split Layer of Earth-mount Kailas -- the Sound of Nirvana II.

CAO Yong’s wild, shaggy hair and unkempt appearance aren’t the only things that make him a distinctive presence in America’s contemporary art scene. Most well-known Chinese artists in America today owe their success to a certain ‘Eastern charm’ in their work that appeals to Western audiences. Ding Shaoguang, for example, depicts China’s ethnic minorities using the fine-line, brightly-colored gongbi technique. Similarly, Chen Yifei utilizes oils to portray classical beauties dressed in Qing Dynasty-era costumes. Cao Yong’s oil paintings are a sharp contrast, presenting scenes of American life from a culturally cosmopolitism perspective -- and the Americans love it.

Freedom is Cao’s best-known American work, lauded by Congressman Gary Miller as a perfect gift to the American people. Dedicated to those who lost their lives in the September 11 terrorist attacks, the painting comprises a collage of classic scenes from American history, such as the moon landing and the raising of the U.S. flag over Iwo Jima during the Second World War. Thousands of limited edition Freedom prints have sold at over U.S. $1,000 each.

The success of Freedom follows on from the acclaim Cao garnered with We the People, a painting depicting America’s founding fathers, produced to celebrate the country’s inaugural Constitution Day on September 17, 2005. The original hangs in Independence Hall at Knott’s Barry Farm in California, but hundreds of thousands of copies of the picture have been distributed across the U.S. as the cover of a booklet containing the Constitution of the United States. Last year Cao was granted the “2006 Inspiration Award” by the International Leadership Foundation, and today his work is sold by approximately 300 American galleries.

Early Hardships

Despite his current success, Cao was born into a life of hardship and poverty in China’s Henan Province in 1962. At five he was helping to carry gravel on a construction site. But his poor upbringing never smothered his talent or passion for art. He started painting at 11 on whatever material he could find, utilizing old newspapers, pieces of used packing paper and hardboard. The one element he couldn’t scrounge was the paint itself, so he raised the necessary funds by pawning his winter clothes in summer, and summer clothes in winter. One day his mother brought home a bundle of stained white cloth she had implored a local shopkeeper to give her. Cao burst into tears at the sight, exclaiming, “Mom, for the first time I’ll be able to paint on canvas.” When he reached college age, Cao’s parents sold their most valuable possession -- a piglet -- to fund his trip to the provincial capital to take the entrance exam. He was eventually accepted by the Art Department of Henan University at age 17.

Upon graduating in 1983, Cao volunteered to work in Tibet, becoming the youngest lecturer on art at Tibet University. He was inspired to work on the holy plateau by an incident that occurred in Qinghai Province while he was on a painting trip one winter. Penniless, Cao attempted to spend the night in a railway station, but was throw out by a security guard. Shivering outside, he noticed a group of Tibetan pilgrims boiling tea over a bonfire. Drawn to the fire’s warmth, Cao stealthily slipped his feet under the sheepskin robe of a Tibetan elder. Leaning against the old pilgrim, Cao soon fell sleep. When he awoke the next morning, the Tibetans wordlessly handed him a bowl of steaming buttered tea, his first encounter with the warm, sweet Tibetan brew. The taste of that first bowl has lingered in his memory to this day.

Seven years in Tibet left an indelible mark on Cao. Sitting in his comfortable American home, he still fondly recalls his days on the plateau. He visited every monastery in the autonomous region, copying hundreds of ancient murals, and spent nearly a year studying wall paintings in the ruins of the lost Guge Kingdom.

Although a picturesque setting, Tibet’s harsh climate and stark wilderness meant Cao frequently had to resort to extreme measures to survive. “Fieldwork in Tibet was a formidable challenge, and begging for food was a basic survival skill,” recalls Cao. But begging was far from the worst activity Cao was forced to engage in. He once subsisted on black beans -- usually reserved for livestock -- for 11 days. On another occasion he fought a wild dog for a dry bone. These ordeals forced Cao to contemplate the meaning of life and death, a central concern of Tibetan religion. “It’s a basic truth that every life will come to an end one day, so it’s interesting to think of death when one is alive. By doing so one will be free of many troubles in life,” explains Cao. To this end, the artist worked for a time as the assistant of a sky burial priest, handling as many as 22 corpses a day.

Cao’s Tibetan experiences led to The Split Layer of Earth: Mount Kailas, an oil series which aroused immediate interest in China’s art circles. Although his work has evolved in terms of subject matter and technique, the outlook Cao developed in Tibet has continued to inform his painting.

Japanese Interlude

Cao met his second wife, the Japanese artist Aya Goda, during a trip to Kashi in China’s remote far-west Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in 1988. With his flowing locks and ragged clothes, Cao looked so strange to the local innkeeper he was given a room in the section for foreigners. Aya, a print student at Musashino Art University, was living next door.

Cao followed Aya to Japan after a controversial Beijing solo exhibition teeming with nudes in 1989. For several years he was unable to find steady work, and at one point had to resort to digging graves to make a living. However, his commercial wall paintings eventually caught the attention of Japanese muralists. Following the completion in just four days of the 16 x 4 meter fresco Banquet of a European King for a department store, Cao won contracts to produce murals for hotels, shopping malls and landmark buildings across Japan. Meanwhile, Cao’s Tibetan-themed oil paintings were being exhibited in prestigious Japanese galleries, causing a sensation in the local media and art community. Japanese critic Yoshie Yoshiedach proclaimed Cao’s works the most fantastic he had seen in decades, describing the artist as the “Goya of modern times.”

American Romanticist

Cao’s life took another dramatic turn when he moved to the United States in 1994. Soon after migration, Cao’s American agent took all his savings and his wife returned to Japan, unable to adapt to American life. “Nobody wanted to buy my works,” recalls Cao, “So I had no income, and no place to live but the street.” Despite a life of renewed hardship, he never considered giving up. “Passers-by thought I was homeless and handed me food. That touched my heart.”

Starting from ground zero, Cao experimented with a range of styles and approaches in an attempt to express his impressions of the new country. He drove to every corner of the U.S. on a mission to absorb as much American culture as possible. “I wanted to be like the brooks produced by the melting snow and ice of the Himalayas, flowing from all directions into the sea. I realized I could no longer paint Tibet, as it belonged to the past. My work has to follow the flow of life.”

During this period Cao’s concerns underwent a dramatic shift, from religious soul-searching to the embracing of a secular romanticism. Through masterly manipulation of composition and color, he boldly explored new styles and subjects, expressing his passion for life in America. With Freedom and We the People, Cao carved a distinct niche in the mainstream American art market.

The success of these two works means Cao’s paintings are now often sold even before completion. In 1999 the artist founded Cao Yong Editions Inc, a publishing house distributing limited edition prints of his work. A print with his autograph sold four years ago is now estimated to be worth U.S. $8,000, while the original is priced at over U.S. $1 million, making Cao’s works the most expensive of any Chinese painter in America. After 17 years abroad, Cao returned home in August 2006 to open the Cao Yong International Art Gallery, which will sell prints of his work in a bid to tap into the oil painting replica business, a market still largely unexplored on the Chinese mainland.

Although one of a select group of Chinese artists on the top rungs of the contemporary American art scene, Cao says there is no secret to his success. “In a free-market economy like the U.S., artists receive little help. Producing good work and gaining recognition is the key.” If there is anything that distinguishes Cao, he believes it’s the fact that he always, above all, follows his heart, both in his life and his work.