Painting of the Mother · Wang Yuzhen
draw
family
simple
seashell
Wang Yuzhen, born in 1964 in Sichuan, later married to Ning Qiang, Hanzhong, Shaanxi, an ordinary rural woman. Since childhood, he liked to draw, but did not have the conditions to learn. In 2015, he began to create works under the encouragement of his son Zhang Binglin, and has accumulated more than 300 works so far.
She uses painting to heal the bittersweet years that have passed
· Zhang Binglin ·
My mother was born in rural Sichuan, and when she grew up, she married far away in the mountains of Shaanxi Province, lived deep in the countryside and worked for most of her life. Her time disappeared second by second in the busy years of each day. My father worked outside the home for a long time and rarely came home, so all kinds of farm work in the family fell on my mother alone. Many people have all kinds of happy childhood memories, and in my mind, childhood is more of an unforgettable bitter memory, mother-in-law contradictions, women-in-law conflicts, neighborhood conflicts, gangs, bullying of the long road to school... The crumbling home was carried by my mother, a woman so strong and ordinary that she could no longer be ordinary. Fortunately, both of our brothers stepped out of the mountains, were admitted to the ideal university, and each worked hard towards his dream. My brother realized his dream of calligraphy, and now I have basically realized my dream of being a painter. In another sense, it can be said that I realized my mother's hidden dream. Every painting of mine she looks at for a long time, and it seems to her to be extremely precious, because it is too difficult to obtain.
From the moment I remember, my mother was busy in all kinds, and faced with family conflicts and bullying by village tyrants, and it was not clear at that time who she was busy for, for whom she went to insist on the days she did not like. Year after year, the reality of survival cruelly dissipated my mother's enthusiasm for painting, the reality of the 1970s and 1980s was not to find dreams, but to live well, and my mother, an ordinary woman, calmly accepted the baptism of wind and rain from the agricultural era. Once, in order to be able to read books, she spent half a year copying the entire "Xinhua Dictionary", which seemed to be a very clumsy way, but had extraordinary patience and persistence. Hard years, never forget dreams, eager to learn. Beauty and bitterness, busyness and leisure, pain and joy accompany the corners of the countryside, and she is working hard for her hidden dreams in various ways. When I was seven or eight years old, by chance, I would find in my notebook small flowers and grasses and various life scenes drawn with pencils, various figures painted in colored chalk on the walls, and brush letters written by my father on the adobe walls, which were the most beautiful childhood memories for me, and perhaps all this was the enlightenment of my painting. The more later, the fewer these imprints became...
Time flies, the people of the village gradually relocate, and the land that was once full of crops is deserted. The days were idle, and every time she chatted with her mother, she would go back and forth about all kinds of painful pasts in the countryside. At first, I coped, day by day, every time we met, she would spend hours to recall the past, and even be able to carefully describe what happened decades ago, and when it came to happy things, she would cry, and when it came to sad things, it was even more tearful, which was a little sad for me, a person who was not willing to recall the past. What a sad thing it is to live in such a memory every day.
By chance I came across a painting story about Grandma Moses, who learned to paint at the age of 76, held solo exhibitions at the age of 80, and became famous in her later years. Grandma Moses said, "Life never starts too late, anyone can paint." She added: "People of any age can paint. "For a person like me who loves painting to see such a report, I have great admiration in my heart, and in terms of age comparison, people in their 50s are a good start." I tried to tell my mother the story of Grandma Moses, hoping that she would no longer be immersed in painful emotions, and maybe another way to release the past that displeased her, so that she could find herself again! Finally, under my persuasion, I picked up the paintbrush and activated the dreams she had buried in her heart for decades, painting one after another, changing various angles and scenes, and since then painting has become an important way for her to release her memories. At first I really wanted to give her some assistance through my painting foundation, but when I saw the lines and colors she had drawn, I didn't know how to teach her how to draw. Incredibly, the distorted perspective, the flat color, the wrong proportion structure of the characters, the picture that seems to have accumulated so many mistakes, the overall sense of the picture presented is incomparably clear and real, as if each picture has a special harmony, with the content of the picture that we can read.
Masters such as Picasso, Miró, and Dubuffe spent their entire lives returning to painting like children. When I graduated from the fine arts major, I was unable to use the so-called college system to judge perspective and proportion when I was faced with these pictures painted by my mother that reflected the real life in the countryside, and suddenly felt that the expression of art should not be limited to the sketch relationship between perspective and proportion, but presented by the authentic things sent from the heart. So in her mother's works, which break the shackles of traditional techniques, perhaps she does not understand the use of techniques, color collocation guidelines, together with the pen points directly to how to express freedom, she is using her way to interpret the epitome of life in the context of a special era, and even some works present dozens of characters, small space and great freedom, unrestrained painting methods have no rules to speak of, on the contrary, they have taught me a deep lesson. Whenever I look at her more than three hundred works, I also fall into a kind of thinking, what can my pictures reflect, I am bound by rules, I lack the freedom of the original heart, academic art has given me technical support, depicting and exploring deep aesthetic ideas, and I need to spend my life to get rid of these, like my mother.
I am glad that I chose to paint in the first place, and what is even more touching is that my mother opened her heart because of painting. Painting is the companionship of no class, the silent self-release, the medicine to heal the soul, and the channel that opens the dialogue with things. In a pluralistic world, we follow the changes of this era, and in all walks of life, the power to cultivate ourselves can release the body and mind. I often introspect myself: "Born with warmth, hidden in the commonplace, life in the sea and the sea, mountains and rivers, with the light and dust, with the time to soothe the scroll, there is light in the heart, the past, the tincture of human affairs, never be a gentleman." ”
(The author is the son of Wang Yuzhen, a young oil painter, and the vice president of Shaanxi Contemporary Painting Academy)
Appreciation of works
Wang Yuzhen's "Greeting the Bride in the Mountains" is colored on paper
40cm x 40cm 2019年
Wang Yuzhen's "Protective Umbrella" is colored on paper
40cmX40cm 2019
Wang Yuzhen's "Cauliflower Nectar" is colored on paper
30cm x 20cm 2015年
Wang Yuzhen's "Spring Song Line" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Spring Festival Homecoming" is colored on paper
30cm x 20cm 2014年
Wang Yuzhen's "One of the Village Bullies" is colored on paper
21cm x 15cm 2015年
Wang Yuzhen's "Village Bully No. 2" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Village Bully No. 3" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Village Bully No. 4" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Village Bully No. 5" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Village Bully No. 6" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Earthquake Memory" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Spring and Autumn" is colored on paper
30cm x 30cm 2021年
Wang Yuzhen's "Separation of Families" is colored on paper
30cm x 40cm 2019年
Wang Yuzhen's "Separation of Families No. 2" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Rush back" is colored on paper
30cm x 20cm 2014年
Wang Yuzhen's "In-laws Beating Pregnant Daughters-in-Law" is colored on paper
30cm x 40cm 2019年
Wang Yuzhen's "Mother-in-law Beating Pregnant Daughter-in-Law No. 2" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "In-laws' Instructions" is colored on paper
21cm x 15cm
Wang Yuzhen's "Memory of in-laws" is colored on paper
30cm x 20cm 2021年
Wang Yuzhen's "Memory of the Mother-in-law II" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Too Big Year" is colored on paper
30cm x 40cm 2021年
Wang Yuzhen's "Homecoming" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Returning to Her Mother's House to Overcome Difficulties" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Returning to Her Mother's House to Overcome Difficulties No. 2" is colored on paper
30cm x 20cm 2015年
Wang Yuzhen's "Returning to Her Mother's House to Overcome Difficulties No. 3" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Happy Events at Home" is colored on paper
40cm x 40cm 2021年
Wang Yuzhen's "Homeland" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Homeland No. 2" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Autumn Harvest" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Happy Spring" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Memories of The Old Home" is colored on paper
30cm x 30cm 2022年
Wang Yuzhen's "Willow Dark Flowers Bright and Another Village" is colored on paper
30cm x 30cm 2021年
Wang Yuzhen's "Dragon Claw Mountain" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Agricultural Dazhai" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Aoki River Is Picturesque" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Founding of the Communist Party of China" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Autumn Number Urges Farmers to Be Busy" is colored on paper
30cm x 40cm 2021年
Wang Yuzhen's "Persimmon Matter Red" is written in black and white
Wang Yuzhen's "Persimmon Processing" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Harvesting Corn" is in black and white on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Song of Stepping on Spring" is colored on paper
30cm x 30cm 2022年
Wang Yuzhen's "Children's Funny Memories" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Playmate" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Feed the Pigs" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "My Family's Red Jujube Tree" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Country Band" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Footprints in the Heart" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Transporting Sand" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "New Look of the New Village" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Greeting the Bride" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Fish Boat Evening Singing" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Pregnant Woman Pulling Mill" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Footprints of a Pregnant Woman" is colored on paper
Wang Yuzhen's "Roasting Fire" is colored on paper
Zheng Weibin, editor-in-chief of Chinese Painting Weekly