At first glance at Zuo Yanfeng's works, the viewer will be struck by the elusive ambience brought forth by his works. The contour outlined by but a few strokes in the painting may be aligned with the impressions of some figures in our minds, but there is also a unalignment between the simplification of the color and that of the line. The two basic underlying elements of the painting, color and line, miss each other over and over again in Zuo Yanfeng's paintings, until the meet at the center of the painting where color and line match up in an image—sometimes a recognizable figure of an animal. Yet, the information provided by this match is so scarce that the viewer is destined to meet a dead end on the path of symbolism and realism and can only walk the path of lyrical abstraction to comprehend Zuo Yanfeng’s work.

So the viewer approached Zuo Yanfeng's work in a closer distance. Viewed from the perspective of painting as a form, Zuo Yanfeng's work presents a very diverse color fields on the surface, which is always separated by curved lines. The artist employs superb skills to saturate each color field with a detailed gradient of lightness and grayscale, while maintaining a clear directionality in the control of brushstrokes. Among these color fields, the flatness and the sense of objecthood respectively occupy a place in the painting - Zuo Yanfeng usually uses less medium in the color blocks with strong flatness, so that the local colors shows a dry and cracked effect in which some color blocks look mottled and rough, full of the introverted textures.

In contrast to the rough color blocks, the blocks with a smooth texture are accomplished by the meticulous gradation of lightness and grayscale. The result is the appearance of clear and protruding geometric components in different parts of the painting. In addition to flat and protruding features, Zuo Yanfeng builds a basic visual structure by using underlying layout in the composition. For example, in the work Voice of Night (2022), Zuo Yanfeng constructed an inwardly concave triangular structure in the middle part of the painting. This triangle, as the foundation of the layout, is covered by countless intricate curves, making it difficult to observe.

Relying on the employment of the two types of color fields and underlying layout, Zuo Yanfeng creates a unique spatial language of "convex", "flat" and "concave" in his painting. The relationship between the concave and convex parts are not accomplished by any preliminary design, on the contrary, as he said, the relationship is found in the process of construction. On the one hand, this search reminds us of the “finding general relationship” under the academy tradition in China; on the other hand, it relies on an intuition to explore the possibilities under construction. The reliance on intuition is a concept that Zuo Yanfeng often emphasizes in his daily discussions, and this reliance often exhausts him to an extreme in the process of working. In the final appearance of the work, the painting often requires dozens of overlays and revisions to achieve a satisfactory state.

Under this working method, Zuo Yanfeng's works completely depart from visual narrative, symbolism, and any language related to subject matter or figurative construction. The state of his pictures is by no means the heavy paint smudge from Frank Auerbach's work; nor the Baconian destructive smudge from Adrian Ghenie's works; in fact, Zuo Yanfeng’s work also removes the truly random and occasional color marks that are common in the New Casualist works, as well as the roughness that often favored by New Casualist paintings—nonetheless the characteristics of all the aforementioned paths can be found in Zuo Yanfeng's works. If the lyrical abstraction inevitably reveals a status quo from the artist's emotions, this status quo in Zuo Yanfeng's works is very estranged. Behind the seeming continuousness, smoothness and coherent smearing, the lyrical rhythm constructed by the lines displayed on the canvas is the result of a very careful and rational filtering and repeat revising. The accidental factors in Zuo Yanfeng's works occur at the beginning of the construction of the entire work, though re-employed in the revision phrase, after the relationship based on accidentality and relativity is roughly established, the artist's deliberation and description of each part are based on reason, technique and experience.

For many viewers, Zuo Yanfeng's works often present an enigmatic temperament like a dreamy murmur which is constituted by the fascinating richness and integrity of the color blocks, the smoothness of the lines, and a mysterious resonance between a part in the picture and a part at the other end. The viewer's observation will stay for a long time in Zuo Yanfeng's works, repeatedly traveling between the parts and the whole, trying to understand what is attracting them in this elusive fascination. The use of serene gray and various dark colors reminds people of some kinds of sediment. Sediment often takes a quiet and long process, which is also a state that the viewer often experiences as viewing Zuo Yanfeng's paintings. Some intensely curved lines and scarcely employed pure colors in the painting seem to imply a violent vitality breaking out of the quietness, a slumbering ancient being at its awakening moment, a primitive force wanders in the wilderness, and an underground volcano prepares its eruption in an imperceptible way.