The Wall Street Journal has profiled three of the 19 missing Chinese artists who were on board Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 when it disappeared on March 8: Wang Linshi, age 69; Liu Rusheng, age 76; and Maimaitijiang Abula, age 34.

Liu, the oldest artist in the group, is a member of the China Calligraphy Association and a director of at the Nanjing Painting and Calligraphy Academy. The painter used to perform in a Communist Party-sponsored art troupe. Wang, described as a “typical Southern Chinese literati,” belongs to the Nanjing Zhongshan Painting Institute. For Abula, part of the ethnic Uyghur minority, the ill-fated journey was his first time showing his artwork abroad.

The artists were returning from Kuala Lumpur, where their work was on view in the exhibition “Chinese Dream: Red and Green Painting.” Organized by the Art Peninsular Enterprise, the show was part of an ongoing Sino-Malaysian art and cultural exchange.