Jeanie Leung: Follow Your Passion!

By Shlomo  Maital

Jeanie Leung

My last blog was posted Nov. 5,  a very long (for me) 15-day silence, owing to travel, and difficulty in accessing Facebook and WordPress in Mainland China.   Today my wife and I are in Hong Kong, at Hong Kong University of Science and Technologies, a truly great research university where I will give five lectures.  HKUST is only 23 years old, founded in 1993,  yet it is now ranked among the world’s top engineering and science universities, owing to clever innovative leadership.  

    My friend Amylia took me on a tour of HKUST yesterday and by chance, in the library, we stumbled on an exhibition by an artist Jeanie Leung.  (See her website:  www.jeanieleung.com,  and ‘like’ her on Facebook,   Jeanie leung).    Jeanie is an HKUST graduate with a BBA (Bachelor’s in Business Admnistration).  She worked successfully in banking.   But her passion was art, even though she has never formally studied painting. 

    One day, she quit her job, left the secure paycheck – and sent out on an adventure.  She wrote a series of wonderful books,  child-like in quality but with powerful serious messages,  illustrated by her incredible acrylic-on-paper paintings.  The series of four books is called Colours of Stories.   Yesterday I met her in person at her exhibition and got her autograph. 

    Jeanie typifies two key principles. One is: Follow your passion!   She has, and has been eminently successful.  The second is:  Discovery and Delivery, you need both.  She had a brilliant concept for her books.  But she works exceptionally hard to implement them.  She finishes a painting in 2-3 days, and it takes over 40 of them to make a book.   From a video, it appears she works on the floor.      HKUST is helping her market her books and is giving her moral support – despite her abandoning the business world for the world of art and books. 

    Congratulations, Jeanie.   I hope others will follow your example.