The revelation of Zeng's figures behind the "mask" eventually led the artist to explore other avenues of expressive portraiture, focusing increasingly on brushwork as well as on the environment of his subjects. With his Maofrom 2005 (Lot 1207) we see again the unrestrained brushwork hinted at in A Pair of Tigers Zeng offers a three-quarter view of China's Great Helmsman, borrowing a classic and canonized image of Mao's biography as a young revolutionary. Of his painting practice, Zeng has said, "I was interested in expressing the attitudes of moods of people, of an individual person, and to do so in a direct response, aimed at conveying the person's expression, emotion, thinking, and my own sense of that person" (I/We: The Painting of Zeng Fanzhi 1991-2003 Hubei Arts Press, ShenZheng, 2003, p. 56).

These post-2000 paintings return Zeng to a full-elaborated canvas. These works display less investment in metaphor and symbol; instead, Zeng relies on the seemingly "automatic" flow his brush to reveal his own feelings on his particular subject. Like many artists of his generation, the formative experience of the Cultural Revolution, and the residual influence of this experience often found its way into Zeng's paintings. In this case, Zeng has taken on the subject of Mao Zedong himself, rendering him with a fully technicolor palette: his suit a luminous cadmium blue, the background a soft pink, his features rendered in naturalistic and inviting towns, giving the effect at once of kitsch and loving nostalgia. Zeng's handling of the surface of the canvas however is suggestive of other readings. Considerable attention is given to the features and surrounding canvas, and Mao's likeness as a result enters into a kind of tension with the swimming surface of the canvas, his eyes still matching our gaze but struggling to fully coalesce underneath the artist's surface elaborations. Zeng effectively resurrects Mao's visage and iconic power with his bold palette and sensual brushwork, Zeng suggests the power Mao continued to have over Chinese life, if not as a political force, but as an emotional force that continued to have a hold over Zeng and his generation.

What Zeng saw as the idealism that sparked imaginations, and his inherent empathy for the risks and self-invention, the bravery and vulnerability of contemporary life, finds expression in his uniquely exultant painting Little Girl(Lot 1231). Zeng himself has a daughter, and it is hard not to imagine with this painting that his thoughts have turned to the futures of subsequent generations. The painting maintains the same nostalgic palette as Mao a young girl is scene from a low vantage point and from behind. Dressed in a short pink frock, in girlish kneehigh socks, she is seen leaping whimsically through high wild grass towards an unknown horizon. The sky is a cool summer blue, and the grey of the grass is not a natural tone but one that is suggestive of city blocks and skyscrapers. Zeng's loose brushwork emphasizes the feeling of liberation inherent to the image, her arms thrown back in wild abandon. The ambiguity of the scene is unavoidable; we cannot know where she is leaping to, or whether she will land safely, but Zeng seems to be embracing even that ambiguity, for once, not a cause of existential torments but as a joyful aspect inherent to existence itself. The diversity and appeal of Zeng's art stems form his honesty, fragility, and beauty in portraying his raw emotions and in expressing his thoughts upon a universally-shared trait; our recurrent human desire to aspire to goals beyond our inherent limits, our desire to appear better than what we are. His anomalous artworks consistently challenge the conceptual line between Western and Eastern art, blending Western artistic inspiration and paint material with East traditions and culture to explore the economical, ideological, and often painful social transformations of a burgeoning modern China.