RAY Yip never set out to be an artist. He had a dream of becoming the architect of grand buildings, making Hong Kong's urban landscape into a beautiful vision.
But one day, 10 years ago, the then 42-year-old took a walk through Greenwich Village in New York and stopped to chat to some artists who were selling their paintings on the street.
They invited him to see their studio, and he was so entranced by their work and their free lifestyle that, instead of staying in New York for a planned two-week holiday he stayed for a year.
'What they were doing was so exciting: they would just take a bucket of paint and pour it,' he said. 'Or create something new: there was no fear.' He experimented and worked, and returned home as an exhibited and dedicated artist. His radical lifestyle change ensured some tut-tutting among his many relatives in Shek O, who were more used to the Yip family offspring becoming accountants than bohemians.
He had, at the beginning of his career, kept the more conservative side of the family happy by being a successful architect in Sydney for 16 years, working on the project to plan the country's most celebrated building - the Opera House - after the original architect bowed out.
But always at the back of his mind was the idea of returning to Shek O, the fishing village to the southeast of Hong Kong island, where his family could claim six generations of residential history.