  hen talking about his name, the tall and gentle young artist Ma Liang, who has high nose bridge and deep eyes, braided whiskers and a comic appearance, betrayed a fleeting moment of unconscious abashment.
That household fairy tale in China had long embarrassed Ma in his childhood years. The “magic painter” in the tale was both a talent and a hero, who painted an ox that could come to life and plough, a horse that could actually draw a carriage, who used his painting brush to punish the wicked and help the good; while the realistic “Ma Liang”, who was given such a name, did not get a magic brush from a white whiskered immortal to help him transform the corruptible into mysterious life and turn unreal things into reality.
Only when we changed the topic to photography did Ma, who sat beside the dark brown long table, restore his confidence slowly. “Photography is my  painting brush,” he would explain like that. “Photography is nothing but a tool; my works are more than photography, and I would rather call them art works.”
Today, Ma Liang, also known Maleonn, is one of Shanghai’s emerging artists, a talented 35-year-old photographer who creates wild, theatrical images, using props, costumes, and outrageous sets. His images are stories, fables that are playful and audacious, and also outrageous – and colorful.
And the creator of these images is every bit as theatrical and impassioned during an interview in his studio.
Looking in the direction of his gaze, we saw opposite the long table in the studio a birdman made of cotton fiber, hung on the wall and extending his wings; a huge pig-head human-body prop doll staying still in the right corner. A plume mask, a potted artificial landscape, a hobbyhorse and other props  scattered all around. A set built up with plastic flowers and plants, withered twigs and leaves took up the space of one end of the studio, half hidden by a glass door. If there were not a few rolled photos casually fixed with drawing pins on a cabinet in the distance, reminding you by accident that it was the studio of a photographic artist, the space would look more like the backstage of a theater after the actors had all left.
It was proper to describe Ma’s photographic art works in the word of “dramatization,” for they acquired scenes of strong magic flavor, pure aesthetic and ambiguous visual effects, symbolic props full of metaphors, and image language with strong narrative power. His early works, like “My Circus Troupe,” “Days on Cotton Candies,” and “The Unforgivable Child,” all built up a sweet and grievous atmosphere of youth. There was the young boy masked in a white robe walking on a ladder in the ruins, the thin and weak little men in the weeds and stone riprap, the black goldfish shaken out of the red books, and the cotton candy of the size of a cloud, etc. “The cotton candy is our amplified sweetness,” said Ma. “I concerned with the surrounding people and their lives that were similar to mine. The dream worlds and the fantasies are all imaginary, and they serve to magnify the sweetness we have captured.”
“Ma Liang is a romantic man,” the art critic Gu Zhenqing wrote in an article. “He can either take off in the narrow Shanghai lanes, or stand up in the  pastoral backgrounds in the suburbs. His picture images are very dramatic and lyric, focusing on the florid and open personality and the resulted lonely ego of the young urban generation.”
The “magic brush” of photography did more than helping Ma to restore the fantastic “dream world”. Ma had spent only three years accomplishing every step many professional photographers had ever dreamed of: from his self-entertaining creation with a camera to his contracting with Yi’an gallery; from his participation in Diaphorama Photography Festival in France, his participation in “The Virtual Salon” of Moca Museum in New York, and his solo exhibitions in Hong Kong, Singapore, Toronto and other places, to his works’ successful access to auction market and being sold at a high price of 150,000 RMB, or about $20,000 dollars, at Sotheby’s auction for a single piece.
“Ultimately I can be called an artist,” said Ma in comfort and relief, “I would create everything I like, and I feel quite happy to live on my art.”
 The thirty-five-year-old Ma had realized his childhood dream of becoming an artist in a way out of his expectations. Before that, he had been a humble young boy who always felt anxious and nervous, he says. After that, for ten years he had been a director carrying out his plan of making movies but had been frustrated and disheartened.
Ma was born in 1972 in a family of strong art atmosphere in Shanghai; his parents were famous, a director and actress respectively in theatrical circles of Shanghai. He says his parents, described as “having childlike innocence” could not probably expect the name “Ma Liang” would bring their son the original sin. “Because I am ‘Ma Liang’, the magic painter in the fairy tale, how should I not paint works? Then, during the whole six elementary school years I had taken up the responsibility of finishing art class assignments for all my good friends.” Ma sighed with emotion at his busy, nervous and uneasy art enlightening years. “At the busiest moment I had to paint several dozen works continuously, and in order to get away with it from the teacher. I had to paint each work with a different subject and in a different style.
The visual stimulations and mind confusions in childhood had been the source of inspiration for Ma’s unique theatrical style in creation. In elementary  school years, Ma spent almost every evening with his parents at the theatrical studio or the backstage of the theater. The unreal florid and magic lives of the knight and the countess in Shakespeare’s plays coexisted with the double aridness of the actual material and spiritual life outside the theater, and the sharp contrast had filled little Ma’s sensitive heart with all sorts of dreams and fantasies. “Anybody is a point where numerous lines intersect,” said Ma, “this is my life, and this is my reality.”
Even at the age of 11 when he was recommended to study in a specialized art school, Ma could still not gain enough self-confidence. “Now everyone knows my biggest achievement is the color photographical works,” leafing through his picture album, Ma called to mind his past resentful memories. “But in school years, the teacher even pronounced the judgment that I had no good sense of color in painting, and I could only learn sculpture.” So, in high school years Ma had to give up painting and changed to sculpture; when going to college, he was unexpectedly enrolled to study two-dimensional design  in Shanghai University. “After graduation from the art college, I have never gone to art museums to view art exhibitions. I have never read any art historical materials and seldom communicated with people in art circles.” Ma admitted of such unyieldingness in his character. Laying down the painting brush he had kept for 11 years, Ma resolutely bade farewell to his loft artist ideals cherished in adolescent years and strode farther and farther into the field of commercial ad industry.
At the end of 1995, Ma left Ogilvy & Mather Advertisement Company where he had worked for one and a half years, for though the company paid him good salaries, he felt depressed working there. After that, this man of idealistic and romantic nature tried to find another outlet for his exuberant passion for creation. With the self-consolation that “advertisement is only one step away from movie,” Ma switched to the industry of TV commercials production, expecting to gain enough experience for his future dream of “making movies.” The nine fortifying years of being a TV commercial director had produced an obvious effect on Ma – he had not only got him acquainted with the preceding-stage art of costume, making-up, prop and other preparations, but also developed abilities to direct and control actors and abilities to narrate with a camera.
 In 1999, Ma set up TV commercial studios in Shanghai and Beijing respectively; in 2000, he produced a series of widely acclaimed TV commercials “Ocular Gymnastics, Made in China” for Channel [V]; and in 2003, he founded the independent TV commercial production company – YES VIDEO SHOP. Before leaving this industry, Ma had been one of the most influential and the most expensive TV commercial directors in China. Even so, the “movie-making dream” was still haunting his mind. To carry out his movie-making plan, Ma stopped his work at the end of 2003 and put all his savings in the preceding preparations for making a movie. He spent more than one year revising the movie script many times, considering shooting techniques, and even sketching out more than 5,000 movie scenes. However, his movie making ended up a failure. “That attempt simply turned into a complete farce,” admitted Ma helplessly, “that year was the lowest point in my life.”
 Ma had never expected he would soon return to his art career because of photography. His dream of being a movie director and his traditional art college education convinced him that photography could neither keep up pace with him nor count as a genuine art. Nevertheless, when he bought a SONY F828, his first digital camera of 8 million pixals in 2004, all has started naturally.
“I just want to create, and this process makes me very happy.” Ma said. He shot a few figure portraits consecutively but felt creation like that was too simple, so he gathered colleagues in his studio together and began to meddle with shooting photos. He would play also as an absolute commander in photographic creations. To prepare for photo shootings he could himself make props, refashion costumes and wigs, or even make up models; after shootings he would still try out all sorts of succeeding work of processing and treatment. He excitedly employed photography to accomplish his self-expressions, and used his movie-making patience and meticulousness to turn theatrical fantasies in his mind into exquisite photographic works.
 “He does not simply grasp the preceding-stage original conceptions and the succeeding-stage shooting techniques, but treats the photo images to near perfection in the final stage, so invests his works with very good emotional effects, which possess some unique poise and charm that can be produced only by sensitive materials,” commented photography critic Gu Zheng, “and in these treatments, Ma Liang would never apply his techniques in excess, and all has been done to the point, allowing his works to acquire perfect visual effects and proper implications.”
In the two or three years, Ma had untiringly published his works on web platforms. “I’m eager to communicate too,” he added. His works soon appeared in photographic forums and in art enthusiasts’ blogs. Many traditional photographic enthusiasts reproached him as superficial in techniques and criticized his works as “arranged stage shootings”; but more of the young Internet enthusiasts left him messages or sent him e-mails to express their appreciations.
“You’re not a pure photographer.” Art critic and curator Bao Kun expressed his great appreciation of Ma, saying, “don’t think you have any lots in doing photography because you take a camera, your works are more of the drama than anything else, only you have made use of some photographic effect to  intensify the climactic moment. Your dramas are not scene-structured but all the climactic episodes you’ve contrived in your mind. … You distill the episodes and present them to the non theater-visiting audience for permanent preservations, and allow them to work out the other plots while delving into these moments.”
The series of “Borrowing Arrows with Thatched Boats” produced in 2005 had greatly boosted Ma’s reputation in contemporary art scenes. Different from “Shanghai Moms’ Good Children,” “The Days on Cotton Candies” and other works that start with the expression of feelings and are directed at people’s inner worlds, this series of photographic works produced out of ancient Chinese history stories marked the beginning for the artist to express consciously in his works his deliberations on the Chinese symbols and the traditional historical spirit. In these works, the plastic-enveloped human bodies either stand, kneel down, or lie down against the traditional Chinese ink-and-wash landscapes; they are shot with several arrows but it is not clear whether they have  painful or woeful facial expressions. “Chinese spirit is dead but still stands there,” said Ma. The heavy but romantic Chinese culture looks so sentimental and helpless in reality. The newly created series of “The Second-hand Poetry of the Tang Dynasty” in 2007 continues such a line of thought, exploring the grievous situation where the most romantic and beautiful poetry in Chinese culture has only met misinterpretations and misunderstandings in the current prevalence of a consumer gaudy culture. “I plan, in my identity as a Chinese, to create a work through which I can interpret the art spirit of my mother country,” he said.
In 2005, Ma’s works were sold out in his friend’s gallery at a price of only $300. Nowadays, Ma has contracted formally with the Gallery, and a single piece of his work can be sold at triple that price. Ma does not care much about the difficult situation of the photographic art market in China, and he even rejoices to see that all contemporary art investors show not much interest in photography. “My collectors all love my works very much. They would come to talk with me because of my works, and it is a very romantic thing to me.” He is very content that he can “lead his life in the most romantic manner.”
 In the intervals of the interview, from time to time Ma would check some of the work with his assistant in a brief and determinate manner, and the habitual commanding power and confidence of a director would reveal in his words. Near the end of the interview, Ma enthusiastically showed us the amateur flashlight, front light, laser pen and other lighting props. On the next day they would travel far to the southern plateau of Gansu Province and begin a new shooting plan. He said, “I will use photo images to compose a poem that is about life; I will go to look for new experiences and excitements.”
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