What would it take to accelerate innovation in China, just as a once raging tiger economy paces sluggishly? Perhaps the country's educators can learn from the work of artist Liu Kuo-sung, once labeled a political subversive for his pursuit of western modernism and now oft described as the "father of modern Chinese painting." Both traditional Chinese ink painting and the epic landscapes of the Song dynasty as well as abstract expressionism and hard-edged abstraction inform his work, though Liu himself stresses experimentation above all.

"For example, I teach my students, 'When you eat American beef, do you eat all the bones and skin? You choose and pick and eat the meat and digest and absorb nutrition from the beef,' " the Anhui, China, native, 82, said via translator Alice Zhang, from Taiwan, where he's a chair professor at the National Taiwan Normal University. "Similarly, with painting, you learn techniques and what you think is good, and then you process it - it's not copying."

Liu's work is certainly inimitable, set against the backdrop of paintings by past and current pupils in "Rebel as Creator: The Art of Liu Kuo-sung and His Students." "Natural Meshy White Lines of Snow Mountains" looks to Liu's fascination with what he calls the "tension of white lines" and his interest in working with the white zones, the negative spaces or Yang of his images, in contrast to traditional Chinese paintings' focus on dark lines, which is associated with Yin. To that end, the artist developed a dense paper made with cloth that allows him to peel away fibers to create thickets of white.

"Late Autumn" - an intricate ink-and-color depiction of a Himalayan scene - appears to validate comparisons to Jackson Pollock's gestural efforts, while "Moon's Metamorphosis" reflects Liu's personal fascination with the Apollo space program and its images of the Earth. Such meditations on the moon not only point to a deep well of Chinese lunar symbolism but also take the age-old tradition of landscape painting to the next level - into space.

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Liu clearly relishes that imaginative leap into the void. "In general, when the western artist wants to draw from nature, they go to nature and start drawing," he explained. "For me, it's a little different: when I see something, it resonates in me and I develop a feeling toward it and deep thoughts toward those feelings. I have an idea, but in the process, many things change. Structures can change, colors can change, and feelings can change.

"This is an unknown area - this is a journey of going from an idea to no idea. I have something in mind, but in the end, I have no idea how it's going to turn out."

If you go

Rebel as Creator: The Art of Liu Kuo-sung and His Students: Reception 2 p.m. Saturday. Through Sept. 13. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday or by appointment. NanHai Art Gallery, 520 Broadway, Millbrae. (650) 259-2100. www.nanhaiart.com.

Kimberly Chun colors outside the lines in the East Bay. E-mail: 96hours@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kimberlychun