Artist Profile
Ma Liangshu, born in December 1966, is a native of Yunxi, Hubei Province. In September 1995, he entered Hubei Academy of Fine Arts to study for a master's degree in Chinese painting. He graduated in July 1998 and stayed on to teach. In September 2001, he entered the Academy of Fine Arts of Tsinghua University to pursue a doctorate degree, engaged in the practice of painting creation and the comparative study of Chinese and Western art. He graduated in June 2004 with a doctorate degree and obtained an excellent doctoral dissertation from Tsinghua University. His works have won silver and bronze awards at the 2007 and 2009 Chinese Art Exhibitions. His published academic works and works include: "Morphology of Chinese Painting", "Back to the Yuan Point", Ji Xianlin's "Cowshed Miscellaneous Memories" ink illustration version, Liang Xiaosheng's "Snow City" ink illustration version, "Contemporary Young Painters - Ma Liang Book Volume", "Chinese Painting Classic - Ma Liang Book Volume", "Dream Back to South Garden - Ma Liangshu Modern Pastoral Landscape Painting", etc. He currently teaches at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, is a researcher at the Wu Guanzhong Art Research Center of Tsinghua University, and is a member of the China Artists Association.
In everyone's heart
Each has a pastoral of its own
The interpretation of Ma Liangshu's pastoral landscape paintings is related to memory. About thirty years ago, when a child from the north first boarded a train going south, he pressed his face tightly against the window and looked out the window at a speed of 80 kilometers per hour. As the train brushed past a mountain flowing with streams, he saw a half-naked buffalo leisurely playing in the mountain depression, and the pond next to it was full of blooming lotus flowers, and the wet mountains, leisurely buffaloes and blooming lotus flowers formed a southern pastoral landscape painting. This is my only childhood memory of the Southern Countryside. This memory was both strange and familiar, vague and clear, and had been in my mind for more than thirty years. Everyone has their own memories of childhood, and everyone has their own understanding of the countryside. Perhaps the southern countryside seemed too strange to me, the child of the north, so it added a lot of curiosity, but it became more solid. Now the speed of the train is constantly increasing, the pace of life is accelerating, and the memories in my mind are becoming more and more blurred like the scene of the train speeding by.
As a Yunxi native born in the Qinba Mountains and hanshui Valley, Ma Liangshu has a personal experience of the landscapes and customs of his hometown. In 2001, he entered the Department of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts of Tsinghua University to pursue a doctorate degree, engaged in the practice of painting creation and the comparative study of Chinese and Western art, and made progress in both theoretical and professional levels. During his time in Beijing, the focus of his artistic creation was on the topic of pastoral landscape painting, which he insisted on for more than ten years. I was amazed to know the reasons behind this insistence. I looked through the catalog of his album, and the words "South Garden, Peach Township" jumped out of the lines, as well as titles such as "Dreaming of Returning home to the mountain" and "Being in the countryside". Between the lines of the catalog, his attachment to the countryside has been revealed. Maybe he is also like me, "in cao ying heart in Han", in the middle of the night when people are quietly lying down, the mind always emerges in the field and countryside colorful butterflies, peach and plum colorful pictures, with the help of a pipe of pen, to depict the "pastoral in the heart". With the help of his solid theoretical foundation, he pondered the influence of "pastoral culture" on the spiritual world of literati, and with his solid professional foundation, he built a performance system of "pastoral landscape painting", which is connected to the traditional Chinese water painting and has a different style.
Appreciation of works