If life is a card game, Chen Heliang believes the key to winning is to throw the rulebook out the window. Having studied Chinese art since he was young, the artist found his own creative path by breaking all the laws traditional Chinese art was founded on.

He first made headway with his unique art form in the early 1990s, where he and a small group of other artists from Shanghai organized a forum on how to modernize traditional water-ink painting. This eventually led to the founding of the New Shanghai Water-ink Painting School.

It is a school of thought that has worked out well for Chen.

Last month the 53-year-old was among 20 Chinese artists featured in an exhibition in Kiev, Ukraine. This July, his paintings will be shown at the 2009 Shanghai Water-ink Art Exhibition.

Later in the year, in October, he will participate in an international art project and create paintings together with French artists. The results will be showcased in the French pavilion at next year's World Expo in Shanghai.

"I believe that art has to evolve together with social developments - new elements have to be injected to China's water-ink art," he said. "But where are the new elements? I believe we have to look deep inside China's classical culture to find the answer. The most important thing is to find it, and to make use of it in one's creations. That is the key to bringing traditional art into a new age."

The basis of Chen's signature style came into being roughly a decade ago, when he stumbled upon the idea of writing calligraphy without leaving margins on all four sides of the paper. This resulted in an abstract style of the art, which features incomplete characters and unfinished brush strokes.

Born in 1956, Chen was just a schoolboy when the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) got under way, a black spot in China's history and a period when schools did not provide adequate education.

"But people were getting tired of these political movements," he said. "You could get recognition and respect if you had some practical skills, such as painting, making handicrafts or tailoring."

Chen subsequently befriended senior scholars and painters who shared his nascent love of painting.

"They were beaten down to the bottom of society. They were so lonely that when youngsters like me showed interest and admiration for their knowledge and art, they were ready to teach me all they knew."

Chen said he learned from the school of life, and all the everyday "teachers" he met along the way.

"They helped broaden my vision better than any school education," he said.

It is a mindset that is evident in his inventive calligraphy today. Though it turns sharply against traditional composition, his work has been widely lauded by many older Chinese artists who believe his free-form still manages "to capture the beauty of the strokes".