Hui Hai Xie began exhibiting in 1979 in his native Shanghai, where he studied at Jiaotong University, graduating in 1984 with a Master of Arts (Painting). He arrived in Australia five years later, holding his first solo exhibition in Sydney that year. He now works as a freelance graphic designer and as a portrait and landscape painter. Four times a finalist in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, he was represented in the 1997 Salon des Refusés, was a finalist in the Sporting Portrait Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2000 and was a finalist in the 2003 and 2006 Archibald Prizes.