If Lin Yueping had followed his friends' advice and taken a stable job as a teacher, he would never have achieved the success he is currently enjoying.

Best known for his paintings of Zhong Kui, a traditional Chinese deity who catches ghosts and evil spirits, Lin has traveled a bumpy road from obscurity to well-known painter.

Lin is now a member of the Chinese Cultural and Art Association and the Three Gorges Painting Academy, but his choice of career was strongly opposed by his family. His elder brother, who was, ironically, Lin's first painting tutor, once arranged for a group of friends to badger Lin into giving up his dream of being an artist. They said he should find sensible jobs like they had, get married, and settle down.

Lin's response was that he could do their jobs better than they could, but that they could never equal him as a painter. His brother’s friends were infuriated and wrote him off as arrogant and a hopeless case.

But Lin went his own way. After graduating from the China Central Academy of Fine Arts, he organized the Contemporary Art Tribe, a group that attracted over 300 painters. The organization mounted many exhibitions over its three-year history. But after this promising start, Lin went through a lean period, spending 10 years in a six-square-meter room living on instant noodles.

"The night is darkest just before dawn," says Lin, who put up with the hardship, struggling to realize his dream. Finally he stumbled upon the deity that led to his success.

A master of free-style Chinese painting, Lin says he has many things in common with the legendary Zhong Kui. Both of them are straightforward and clearly distinguish good from evil. "Qi Baishi, master of Chinese painting, is known for his paintings of shrimps, while Xu Beihong is famous for his horses. They could, of course, paint many other things, but it was their specialties that won them fame," says Lin. "To be accepted by the public as a painter, I need to create my own trademark works."

With bulging eyes and curly whiskers, the ghost-hunting God is shown in various poses in Lin's paintings. Some of them are drawn painstakingly; others are sketched in a flowing hand. Lin explains: "Sometimes I paint for myself, sometimes I paint for the market. I have to temper my dreams with reality to survive in the marketplace."

His works are highly valued by connoisseurs and collectors. According to Ma Liang, a sociologist and collector, Zhong Kui is a symbol of justice in Chinese culture. Lin’s paintings express meanings that have existed in the culture for thousands of years.

Hard working, erudite and active, Lin is not satisfied with just creating pictures. He plans to build personal museums around the country to influence future generations. "I hope my museums will encourage people to study and paint," he says.