Excellent paintings should have two factors at the same time, one is to have ideological guidance and elegant artistic taste, and the other is to have the height and difficulty of skills. The level of thought and artistic interest expressed in the work reflects the artist’s understanding and level of work, while skill is an important symbol to distinguish professional painters from non-professional painters. This is my understanding.
I was admitted to the Department of Decoration of the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts (now the Academy of Arts and Design of Tsinghua University) in 1978. During my school days, I always had a special liking for the painting course. When fashion did not understand the organic connection between painting and design art, therefore, teachers Wu Guanzhong and Qiu Sha who taught our basic painting class seemed to have a greater influence on students like me who like painting. After more than 30 years in the society, in my work practice and artistic exploration, I gradually realized the importance of returning to the “vision” itself, walking into nature and life, for the art of painting. Painters must keep their duty, and the duty of a painter is to create a beautiful artistic image of painting that is “understandable (not understandable)”. Painting is to be seen (visually), not spoken (concept or concept), and the audience also depends on seeing, not listening.
In many years of creative practice, I have gradually realized and realized that solid modeling ability and modeling awareness are the basis for creating beautiful images, and sketching is one of the effective means to improve modeling ability. This is also the reason why I list sketching as my favorite painting method, and sketching has become an important support for my creation. The word “Sketching” comes from the West, and it is said that it means “writing life” in Spanish. This is the most appropriate and profound understanding and description of the word “Sketching”. It is not simply writing “things”, but also Not simply writing “I”, but writing about the feeling of “the blending of things and me” (subjective on an objective basis). Although the sketches are restricted by the conditions of the scene, they cannot fully and fully express the feelings at that time, and even there are some defects in the expression of techniques, but they can express the heart directly. There is artificiality, which partially solves the essential problems of art, such as whether the feeling is real, whether the emotion is sincere.
I have always firmly believed that being close to nature and comprehending life is the main source of artistic creation, which is also the driving force behind my sketching since the fall of 1992 and has persisted until now. There are two reasons why I insist on it: one is to hone my painting skills, and the other is to maintain my love and sensitivity to life. The time spans 20 years, with occasional breaks, but overall it is coherent. The works selected here are divided into two parts, gouache and oil paintings. These works are all sketches. The gouache painting was created in the mid-1990s, and it is a description of the scenery in Tianjin. The city was born from the Haihe River. The Haihe River and the park condense the historical memory of the citizens. The appearance of the Haihe River and the park also changes with the times. Nearly 20 years have passed, and I have preserved my own painting memory for the city. The oil paintings were painted with the students in Hongcun, Anhui and Wuyuan, Jiangxi in recent years when they brought students to the countryside. Guoliang Village in Taihang Mountain, Ezhuang in Shandong Province, Aershan in Inner Mongolia and other places are the on-site sketches when traveling and collecting scenery with the two teachers of our school. I want to try to incorporate some Chinese brushstrokes into these works, emphasizing the appeal of the language of painting, and paying attention to the important role of intuition in plastic arts. In the pursuit of artistic conception, I emphasize the Chinese people’s unique view of nature and aesthetics. And my attitude towards sketching works is usually that even if there are defects and incompleteness, as long as I leave the scene of sketching, I will not make any changes, and I must maintain a true feeling. These works reflect my current pursuit of painting creation. What do you think after seeing them? I look forward to communicating and sharing with my peers.
