Wen 丨 Wu Can
How to paint a landscape painting? This seems to be a problem that contemporary landscape painters do have to face. Figure painters and flower and bird painters have similar problems, but they are far less difficult. For example, after the figure painting is half successful after processing the clothing pattern, the flower and bird painter finds a new object or picture form, and can also stand on it. But our vision of landscape painting should be more demanding. Song Yuan's habits are too much and will be regarded as conservative. That kind of ink landscape or urban landscape will be questioned, is this a landscape painting?
Yunshui Wind Current ║ 125cm×215cm ║ 2020 ║ Color on paper
Landscape painting is an intuitive presentation of the ancients' thinking about the relationship between the self and nature, and the culture it carries is too heavy, not just an artistic ontology problem. In fact, people's complex emotions about natural landscapes have always existed in a state similar to quantum entanglement. Eager to go beyond, but also have to compromise. Compromises must be surpassed. Zhou Huaping's painting of landscapes is also the embodiment of this compromise and transcendence. Like all painters with a teacher, they all started by copying the ancients in their early years. After mastering the basic pen and ink language, he began to think about the question of "how do I want to draw". After about twenty years of exploration and combined with his early individual experience, his painting style gradually became clear in the two series. A kind of thick ink depicts the mountainous living environment of his early Dongxiang, the mountains are reckless, and the woods are shady. Ida Yiyi, the house is like a house. A kind of heavy color, a Buddha or bodhisattva from Dunhuang appears in the deep stream, the cold forest is full of moon, and the frost peak is light smoke. It has nothing to do with everyday experience, but has pictorial significance. The former seeks from the outside, and the latter from within. Asking for what is outside depends on the drive of one's own heart. What is sought within requires the help of objective objects.
Midori Flat Domain ║ 125cm×215cm ║ 2020 ║ Color on paper
Although the starting points are different, the final direction is the same, that is, they both express how painters who live in urban daily life deal with the relationship between the heart and nature.
The ancients had more opportunities to face the natural landscape, which was part of their daily life, and the painter simply painted it. But today, the vast majority of landscape painters live in the reinforced concrete jungle, although trying to get close to the state of the ancients, still painting landscapes, but in fact, it is difficult to get the ancients' real experience of real mountains and real water. Its imagery sources rely on those brief sketches of scenes that have briefly left the city, or simply the landscape pictures themselves. In other words, there is a barrier between the painter and the landscape today, and it is difficult to break it with the subjective efforts of the individual painter,—— but do we need to break it?
Holy Land Shaoshan ║ 125cm×215cm ║ 2020 ║ Color on paper
Today, urbanization is already a historical trend, an inevitable consequence of our modernization process. In this process, it is necessary to change the original natural environment at the expense of the original, but on the other hand, we are also enjoying the convenience of this destruction. It is impossible to go back in time, all you can do is face the present.
Kunshan ║ 97cm×45cm ║ 2020 ║ Color on paper
Hengdong Sketch ║ 45cm×68cm ║ 2021 ║ Color on paper
"How to paint a landscape painting" is not a problem for many painters, but it is just a matter of picking up a pen and ink to paint a landscape painting. The same is true in Zhou Huaping's view, but this is a metamorphosis after several thoughts. Lushan Painted by Jing Hao more than 1,100 years ago, huangshan Mountain painted by Shi Tao more than 300 years ago, there is no major landform change today, it is nothing more than adding some tourist signs. No matter how the environment changes, the landscape is always there.
Shanggantang ║ 45cm×68cm ║ 2021 ║ Color on paper
Jinggangshan ║ 45cm×68cm ║ 2021 ║ Color on paper
A large part of the reason why we are still painting natural landscapes is that it can provide us with an ideal home to settle our souls and a realistic field for cultivating our minds. The landscape in the eyes or hearts of the ancients can be experienced and yearned for by today's people, so Zhou Huaping is still painting landscapes. In the face of them, the ancients had the experience of the ancients, and the present people had the cognition of the present people, which is exactly what Zhou Huaping presented to us in the landscape paintings.
Author Affilications:Central South University
Artist Profile
Zhou Huaping
Born in 1973, Xinhua people, Hunan. He is now a full-time painter of Hunan Provincial Academy of Painting, director of landscape painting studio, national second-level artist, member of China Artists Association, member of Hunan Provincial Artists Association, director of Hunan Provincial Chinese Painting Society, vice chairman of Hunan Young Artists Association, and painter of Li Keyan Painting Academy Youth Painting Academy. In 2020, he graduated from the National Academy of Painting of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the first batch of 300 engineering artists in Hunan Province, and a visiting professor of the Academy of Fine Arts of Jishou University.