In December 1973, Lou Shenyi was born in the county town of Fenghui in Shangyu, Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province. He was admitted to the Affiliated High School of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in 1989 and entered the Mural Painting Department of Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing (CAFA) in 1993. He has been teaching at China Academy of Art (CAA) since his graduation in 1997.

Lou’s painting draws from a broad range of topics benefiting from his childhood reading experience.  Journey to the West, Buddhist sutras,  pastoral sceneries, exotic landscapes, and portraiture are his favourites. After many years of diversified drawing experiments, Lou found his predilection for the rudimentary technique of outlining and colouring, i.e. outlining with markers and colouring with unmixed colours, which brings a concise, powerful, and visually impactful pleasure.

Lou perceives the world with childlike eyes, “I found naivety rather wise: the more superficial it appears, the closer it gets to the profound.”