MENG Hongwei is an interesting combination he is an artist both in the kitchen and with a paint brush.

He is an excellent chef, holding the qualification of senior chef, and has worked in the Jing'an Hilton Hotel and restaurants in the Seychelles and in Belgium. He has also opened a restaurant and two bars in Shanghai.

"I have had a deep love of Chinese culinary culture since my childhood, learning from chefs who once cooked for Chinese leaders like Mao Zedong," said the 38-year-old artist-chef.

But Meng said he now cooks only occasionally as a treat for close friends because he has been devoting most of his time to painting - traditional Chinese ink-and-wash art but with a Western touch.

Painting is something Meng has had an even stronger passion for since childhood which is when he first studied Western painting. At the age of 15, he began to learn traditional Chinese ink-and-wash from Sun Xin and Lu Yanshao, two prominent Shanghai-based painters.

The skill of "Dragon and Turtle painting" learned from artist Wang Yan of Shanghai Peking Opera House eight years ago also contributed to the unique painting style he has today.

Meng said he has great respect for those masters, but what he has been concentrating on in recent years is trying to make a further breakthrough in traditional Chinese painting techniques.

"The techniques of traditional Chinese landscape painting should still be preserved. The ink and brush are magical in expressing the motifs," Meng said. "But by applying some Western skills, the Chinese paintings can become more brilliant, black and colour become more saturated, adding to the artistic concept of traditional Chinese painting."

His life-like "Ink Dragon" has been executed in such an imposing style that it is now a favourite among Japanese art collectors.

"The Music of the Rivulets," a landscape painting, transcends the expression conveyed by traditional Chinese techniques.

"Meng has inherited Chinese ink and wash techniques, but has also injected some Western techniques of perspective and realist painting to enrich Chinese landscapes" was the comment of fine art critic Zhou Tiesheng.

Meng, known to his many foreign friends in town as Kevin, said making such an artistic exploration between Chinese and Western styles has been his lifelong goal.

Back in the 1980s, Meng's bold experiment of using the style of traditional Chinese painting to depict beautiful women on stockings attracted the attention of local police, who considered the art "obscene." He had to flee home for a while.

Meng said his plan at the moment is to move his studio to the Netherlands where he believes he can find a better environment for his art.

He also hopes to introduce the creative power and expression of traditional Chinese paintings to the Western general public.