The painting Red Sister-in-law was created by me to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC). 1983 starts in autumn, and 1984 finishes in spring. In order to create this painting, I visited the prototype of red sister-in-law in Yimeng Mountain many times and collected materials. It is also easy to draw up the image of red sister-in-law: for the first time, no matter whether the prototype of life has shifted or not, I don't think it is a painting; For the second time, I denied portraying Hong Sao as a rough and stupid image, feeling that I didn't show my ideal Hong Sao.

With the deepening of the idea, I feel that the plot of saving the wounded with milk should have shown a kind of human beauty beyond ethics and secularism, and it is a dedication to beauty and youth. If the image of red sister-in-law is painted too rough and stupid, it will certainly have the characteristics of a peasant woman in Yimeng Mountain, but it will not make the incident conflict and dramatic sublimation. So in the last draft, I represented Hongsao as the virgin of a soldier and portrayed her as the embodiment of beauty to reveal the value of beauty and dedication. This kind of beauty is holy, neither rough nor enchanting. In the exploration, I found that the dominance and universality of European classical painting forms are exactly what I pursued in this work, so I adopted the classical painting form. At that time, China's oil painting had no precedent, which was a tentative exploration.

This painting was originally rated as a candidate for the 6th National Art Exhibition by Shandong Artists Association (the selection record is on the back of the painting), but it was suggested that two paintings could not be distributed at the same time, so I won it and only participated in the provincial exhibition. Leave a little regret. This painting was later published in Art World and The Complete Works of China Fine Arts.