Art of love

Yang and her husband Yang Yan.

The two got married in Sierra Leone a month after meeting and Yang followed her husband to China without telling her family. It was a bold move for her and not without challenges.

"I talked to my friends and realized that there are big differences between my country and China - language, culture and climate. But I know when you go to any place, you need to respect their culture, so I decided to follow what people do here," says Yang, who now speaks fluent Chinese.

She was surprised to discover her husband was a painter when she saw his studio.

"I see him painting every day," she says. "Mr Yang is that kind of person. When you see him painting, you want to paint. When he paints, he puts all his attention, his effort, his love into it, which can be very infectious."

When Yang Yan left his desk, Yang picked up the brushes and began to paint mango trees - common in her hometown - using different colors and brush strokes to show how they looked at various stages of growth.

At the end of the 2011, she held her first exhibition. Since then, Yang's art has been shown on many occasions, including at the China-Africa People's Forum, and has been bought by both collectors and galleries. Some have even made it to Africa, with one buyer from Morocco.

What stands out in her work, Yang Yan believes, is its innocence and purity.

"She can be very focused and expresses everything in the scene she paints, which is very precious. To her, art is only art; it has no connections with anything else," he says, who has been painting for more than 40 years.

Huang Yonghe, an 80-year-old master of Chinese painting, even wrote to her, "The purity in your paintings has taught me a lot".

Yang and her husband have collaborated on some artwork, including on a series of paintings of plum-mango trees. On the treetops there are plum blossoms, while on the trunks there are mangos. This series of work was sold to African embassies and Chinese museums.

"Chinese people like plum blossom, which symbolizes integrity and nobility, characteristics that are admired in Chinese culture, while mango symbolizes Africa. This creative idea is very refreshing," Yang Yan says.

Yang adds, "Chinese painting is like a spirit for me now."