Peng Mingli's painting "New School Year". (Courtesy of China News/Peng Mingli)
According to the "China News" newspaper, how to express the elegance and delicacy of the pen strokes to express the dashing and wanton of the horse galloping? Peng Mingli, one of the leading figures in contemporary Chinese gongbi figure painting and horse painting art and a member of the China Democratic Progressive Party, has a lot of experience in this regard. From the tame horses that send tibetan masters to school in "New School Year" to the horses that walk in the "Eight Horses", Peng Mingli can always accurately capture and present its charm. He painted horses, he also painted people, and he painted colorful lives. In a recent interview with a reporter from China News, he said that Gongbi painting is a delicate art, "to the vast and subtle, the work is careful and ingenious", and there are thousands of weathers between the square inches.
Peng Mingli's painting "Dancer". (Courtesy of China News/Peng Mingli)
Draw a different horse The horse that sent the little Tibetan master to school carried a skateboard and a computer on his back
In Peng Mingli's studio on the eastern outskirts of Beijing, a painting of the New School Year hangs prominently. In the painting, a Tibetan mother leads a white horse to the left side of the picture, and the little boy sitting on a horse has a pleasant expression, and the scooter, laptop and other school supplies fill the basket on the horse's back. Two other horses appeared with a puppy running happily with its tongue. Stretching far away, there are endless autumn plateaus and majestic snow-capped mountains. This 9-month Gongbi painting won the gold medal as soon as it was unveiled at the Second National Modern Gongbi Painting Exhibition in 2014.
Peng Mingli said that paintings win in subject matter and creativity. "New School Year" avoids traditional practices, extends its tentacles into the modern life of the people in Tibet, and directly starts from the theme of Tibetan mothers sending their daughters to school, and the novelty immediately appears. In terms of composition, it boldly adopts the horizontal arrangement of the main body picture that is rarely used in ordinary paintings, and gives the picture a relative sense of balance in the details by vertical methods such as ponytail, basket, and mother's standing posture. "This painting is a good representation of my favorite horse and the way I don't want to go with the flow." Peng Mingli said.
Peng Mingli loves to draw horses, and he especially likes sweat and blood BMW. "They are healthy and lively, with slender limbs, noble and elegant, full of vitality, and they are good friends of mankind and messengers of peace."
Peng Mingli's "Gunma Diagram", "Eight Horses", "New Era", "Dance in the Snow", etc., the horses gallop and walk in the wind, implying the prosperity of the times; the quiet horses standing in "Roman Spring" and "The Covenant of Heavenly Heaven" are clean and solemn, containing the understanding of life.
In order to paint horses, he went to Xinjiang, Gansu, Tibet and other places many times to see the scenes of horses moving and running in the field.
"Animals are as joyous and sorrowful as men, and they can see the shadow cast on it by the person who raised it. By painting it, you can express emotions that are connected with humans, especially the eyes. ”
In fact, due to wind and sand, sun and other reasons, many horses' eyes are often covered by long eyelashes. But Peng Mingli still likes to depict the eyes delicately and subtly, especially to highlight the "vivid transmission" of the eyes, for the simple reason that "to expose the eyes, it is the window of the soul."
Singing for the Guoshi During the fight against the epidemic, he painted Zhong Nanshan and Li Lanjuan's character paintings
"Of course, I don't just paint horses, I also paint people, I paint colorful lives." Peng Mingli, who has passed the age of jiazi, has a wealth of life experience, he has worked as a blacksmith and painter, a soldier, a teacher, and now a painter... For more than 40 years, he has traveled south and north, from China to the West, reflecting his unwillingness to keep the old and seek new changes.
"Artistic creation must have a real accumulation of life. Inspiration may flash in an instant. "In 2009, when Peng Mingli was collecting wind in the west, he deliberately went to Wenchuan and other places after the earthquake to walk around, and felt the positive life of the locals after the earthquake and the scene of revitalizing their homes." It is important to draw the agility and hope of life and transmit positive energy. So many people are trying to live, and they will also be infected, passing on the energy of life to more people. ”
During the anti-epidemic period in 2020, the Minjin Enlightened Painting Institute organized the creation, and Peng Mingli, as a member of the DPP, participated in the creation, and created character paintings "Light of the Nation" and "Academician Li Lanjuan, a hero of the towel" for Academicians Zhong Nanshan and Li Lanjuan, respectively, singing for the national soldiers, paying tribute to the heroes, in order to encourage the people to unite and cooperate and actively fight the epidemic. He believes that these two old people have reached the age of old age, but after bravely fighting "SARS" 17 years ago, they once again charged in the frontline of the fight against the epidemic for the health of the Chinese people, and their great love is worthy of praise with pen and ink Danqing.
In his works, Peng Mingli constantly pours out his love for life, and in life, he constantly picks up the agility of life. In the interview, he talked about what happened to him when he was collecting wind in the west: one night, there was a group of wolves outside his residence, and the manager told him not to go out, so he lay down by the window, admired the looks and movements of each wolf, and pondered their psychology, "Don't be afraid at all, see how cute they are, maybe they smell the unique smell of me as a foreigner to see me."
Peng Mingli's painting "Roman Spring". (Courtesy of China News/Peng Mingli)
The painting is based on Yong Huai's Qu Yuan's spirit
When it comes to strokes, Peng Mingli is always excited. In his view, gongbi painting is a delicate art, paying attention to line modeling, neat, delicate, rigorous, calm color, "to the vast and subtle, the work is careful and ingenious charm", and thousands of weather can be displayed between the square inches.
Of course, artistic expression should not be limited to technique. Peng Mingli took the recent hit "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" as an example, "it looks very simple, but it uses the language of painting to show the Oriental people's understanding of mountains and water, rather than mechanically restoring the scene of reality, which is the pinnacle of green landscapes."
"Art is art, not technology. In addition to talent, there must be a thickness of humanistic heritage. Peng Mingli said.
In 2021, Peng Mingli donated the portrait of Qu Yuan, which took four years to create, to Miluo, Qu Yuan's "homecoming place". From the determination of the theme to the completion of the content, the manuscript is changed three times. "It would be too sad to describe Qu Yuan's later life scene towards the end, so I chose the period when he was about forty years old, when he was running for the life of the people, as the background period of the work, hoping to create a glorious image of a patriotic poet with eguan Bo belt and elegance."
In the painting, Qu Yuan looks ahead, his eyes are shining, and his eyebrows show pride and integrity. The expressions, appearances, hair, and hair ornaments of the characters all have historical sources. Mao Qingli, former director of the Institute of Literature of the Hubei Academy of Social Sciences and honorary president of the China Qu Yuan Society, praised the most successful look in "Qu Yuan", unlike the previous paintings about Qu Yuan, which highlighted sorrow or anger, and the Qu Yuan in this painting had a far-sighted vision, in line with the spirit of "although he died nine times, he still has no regrets".
Peng Mingli believes that Now China is vigorously carrying out aesthetic education activities, and to improve artistic literacy, it is necessary to carry out long-term infiltration and nourishment of solid history and culture, in order to form the creator's own unique values and concepts, so as not to easily form a "follow-up expression".
He also believes that art cannot be over-commercialized, otherwise it can only be called a commodity, and the creators of works will be alienated into "commodity processors on the assembly line".
In October 2021, Peng Mingli's painting collection was published, publishing his works from 1999 to 2021 according to the chronology. The last painting in the collection is a portrait of the famous painter Huang Yongyu. Peng Mingli said that Huang Yongyu is his idol, "he is very accomplished in painting and writing, living a dashing and comfortable life, and in the end, I want to express what he sees, hears and understands in his heart with the specific image under the brush."
On the day of the interview, the reporter saw a huge work in Peng Mingli's studio being created. "It's been more than half a month, and I don't know when I'll finish it." There are no horses in this work, there are cats. Peng Mingli laughed at the "spoiler" and said that this is a work of contemporary themes, and he wants to reflect contemporary life through it.
Perhaps, in the near future, the "gully in his heart" will be condensed into "the rivers of his pen".
【Biography】
Peng Mingli is a member of the China Artists Association, a member of the China Gongbi Painting Society, a painter of the Guangdong Academy of Painting, a director of the Li Zhimin Calligraphy Art Research Association of Peking University, a full-time painter of the China Ink Painting Academy, and the vice president of the Beijing Shoubo Calligraphy and Painting Institute. Since 2000, his works have been selected for the National Chinese Painting Exhibition more than 20 times and won 12 awards, in 2014 his work "New Semester" won the gold medal of the National Modern Brush Painting Exhibition, in October 2015, his works participated in the "Visual China, Intercontinental Trip" Sino-Italian Cultural Exchange Exhibition and Florence International Art Biennale, in 2017 his works participated in the first global ink painting exhibition in Hong Kong, in 2018 his works participated in the Hong Kong Global Ink Painting Elite Invitation Exhibition, and in 2020 his work "New Era" Won the Inheritance Award and Collection Award of the 11th National Gongbi Painting Exhibition.
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