In the 1980s of the last century, Chinese contemporary art experienced an intense period of change. "Stars Exhibition", "85 New Wave", and "Modern Art Exhibition" of the Art Museum of China in 1989, recorded the invaluable contribution and achievement of the Chinese artists to the exploration of Chinese art forms. 1989, while avant-grade art became more and more popular in China, Hong Ling was admitted to the Central Academy of Fine Art, and created copious modern oil paintings, including a series of female portraits painted with exaggerated, wild strokes, and mysterious landscape paintings in a gray tones. In 1998, Hong organized "The First Chinese Human Art Exhibition", and in the same year, he painted Seated Nude (Body) (Lot 181). The style of Seated Nude (Body) belonged to the expressionism of Hong's early works. The painting depicts a nude figure with rough black lines, the fluidity of which expresses energy. The use of strong, interweaving colours creates a visual shock and rhythmicity, while thick paint renders the background and musculature of the subject with texture. Although Hong used the human body as his subject, he was not focusing on the objective image, but rather was emphasizing the persuasiveness of the language of painting itself. With his freehand brushstrokes and use of colors, the image fluctuates between figurative and abstract, foreshadowing the unique way in which he would paint nature.

In the 1990s, Hong's art production came to a stage of rejuvenation. He set up his studio in Huangshan, leaving the hustle and bustle of the city to bask in the landscape which of the ancient Chinese literati artists. Hong was determined to present the Chinese traditional and spiritual sentiments towards the landscape using the oil painting techniques. After years of practice and improvement, Hong expresses a remarkable personal style in his paintings of the great mountains and waters. Winter Rhyme (Lot 182), a masterpiece created in 2003, showed Hong's outstanding success in landscape painting and transition to his mature stage in expression through nature. Standing in front of this large-scale canvas, one feels the calmness of being surrounded by a winter forest that reaches all the way into the clouds. Hong purposely allowed the ambiguous shapes of bamboo to play out on the left panel while simultaneously employing the 'void' effect in the background. From there a piece of great art is born - one that must be viewed with not just the eyes but the heart. Instead of adapting the traditional method of producing the 'void' effect, Hong created an interplay of impasto and layered color blocks to achieve a well-organised structure. The viewer is then confronted with the grandeur and splendour of infinite mountains. In order to present the enchanting beauty of the mountains, Hong deliberately reduced the description using clear lines painted with delicate and transparent brush strokes to draw large areas of rocks and trees among frost and mist, and sprinkled color dots to achieve the role of 'break', leveling and spacing. Colour and texture become essential in Hong's painting, the mutual penetration of paints cleverly demonstrate the abstract momentum and realm of ink splash.
The artist goes beyond an objective description of nature, making use of colors to express his own subjective feelings about landscapes in winter. He merged the images of mountains, rivers, trees and rocks, eliminating the effect of light towards the subject, turning the memory of that single moment into an eternal impression, revealing the beauty of the landscape.
Hong said, "The West and the East have their own different ways to express subjective feelings by making use of objective scenery. In general, meditation is common in the East, blending the human emotions with the natural landscape, presenting the unity of human and the nature. In the West, people spread the spiritual seeds in nature, they spiritually sieged the nature, showing the domination of human. Comparing these two cultures, I am more willing to accept the Eastern way, to implant a seed of nature into my heart, and to experience a harmony of sharing among every life in the world."