Last Rays of Sunset

About these two paintings, Wang Mansheng has written:
I strove to capture the moment when daylight turns toward night. Night scenes are uncommon in traditional Chinese landscape painting. But for me, that moment of waning light in the mountains, as the poet Tao Yuanming (born 365 C.E.) described it in a poem, when the air is fresh and the birds are returning to their roosts, is magical. Wang’s paintings refer to classical Chinese themes and the traditional handscroll format, but he uses unique materials. These include homemade ink made from crushed walnut shells, for color that is then combined with acrylic paint, as well as cardboard, instead of the customary soft and absorbent handmade paper, to support the painting. Nightfall in the Gobi depicts the sand dunes engulfing the ancient Buddhist cave-chapels located at Dunhuang in northwestern China, deep in the desert along the paths that camel caravans traversed, known as the Silk Road.