▲ Li Kuchan
Inheriting the tradition of Chinese painting, Li Kuchan drew on the techniques of Shi Tao, Bada Shanren, Yangzhou School, Wu Changshuo, Qi Baishi and others, and was distinctive in the freehand painting of flowers and birds. There is a bold, imposing, and vivid style, which has established a new style of large-scale freehand flower and bird painting. He used his aesthetic views and expressive techniques to create many artistic images.
Li Kuchan's paintings of flowers and birds have a certain realistic component, not an objective depiction of natural objects, but a creation after condensation. There is a simple and humble atmosphere in the casualness, and there is a masculine atmosphere in the natural implication. The larger Li Kuchan's canvas, the more he can wield it freely. Li Kuchan's works in his later years reached the artistic realm of "simple and complex".
▲White Eagle of The Cliff
"Big" is a distinctive feature of Li Kuchan's paintings. For example, the huge "Midsummer Chart" (Lotus Flower Diagram) is made of four pieces of rice paper, with an area of 22.04 square meters. Flowers like pots, leaves like covers, stems like arms, blooming lotus flowers, mountain stones, water birds, make up a huge picture. Another example is "Ink bamboo diagram": it is a huge piece spliced together with three pieces of rice paper.
Li Kuchan likes to use heavy ink in painting, making good use of splashed ink, scorched ink, ink halo, and drawing small works with large brushes. When Li Kuchan talked about pen and ink, he said, "Ink should be thick to be durable." The color should also be used as ink, whether red or green can reach the ink five colors thick." For example, the work "Jinjie Tu" uses a solemn pen and is unique.
▲ Ammonite diagram
The traditional Chinese freehand painting method has fewer sets, mainly one or two levels. Li Kuchan applied the pingyuan and lofty methods of landscape painting to flower and bird painting, which can reach three or four levels.
Li Kuchan uses the thickness of ink color, dryness and wetness, the cold and warm of colors, and the interplay of black and white to increase the sense of layering of the picture, and pushes the viewer's vision and feeling layer by layer into the distance. For example, in the "Midsummer Chart", the first layer is near the shore, colored with light ochre. The second layer is to paint the lotus and aquatic grass with thread and thick ink, and the third layer is to paint the lotus leaves with light ink and the lotus flowers with red. The fourth layer is the picture of the giant stone and the water bird, and the fifth layer is the lotus flower behind the world, so that the layers are slowly progressing.
▲ Eagle with its head held high
Li Kuchan's painting realm is plain and naïve. For example, "The Land of Green Rain and Bamboo" depicts that under the banana leaves after the rain, several cormorants that look around stop on the thick and simple boulders, with different looks, and are enjoying the fresh air after the rain. The cormorant's head and neck are painted boneless in vermilion, and the round eyes make the water bird look energetic. The surrounding scenery is depicted around the theme, pointing out the living environment of cormorants. The pen and ink are natural, no mannerism, simple colors, and simple shapes.
Another example is "Ci Mushroom Heron", which is set in the water town of Jiangnan and depicts a heron leisurely in nature. Li Kuchan used a simple, thick ink color to draw taro leaves and herons, and used lines to outline leaf tendons and aquatic plants. It shows the natural wild interest of Gangnam. In the picture of "Lotus Pond Kingfisher", a kingfisher flies over the lotus leaves in the breeze, and the dew drops fall little by little, between the remnants of the lotus pond, full of life.
▲ Grass group quail
Li Kuchan's paintings are uniquely selected, often using pines, bamboo, plums, orchids, chrysanthemums, stones, lotuses, starlings, cormorants and eagles as their themes. For example, the picture of "Godson Learning to Fly" depicts eagle chicks attached to the back of an eagle and eager to fly. Square eye sockets, axe-shaped sharp beaks, emphasizing the opposite of the eagle and the chick. The overall shape of the diagonal triangle, the overall dynamics of the upward flight.
Li Kuchan painted eagles mostly as "static" eagles, mostly in a crouching posture. For example, in the "Pine Eagle Chart", several eagles stand on the top of the mountain, ready to attack.
▲Chaohui
Li Kuchan's calligraphy and painting complement each other perfectly. It is recommended that "the book is the height of the painting, and the painting is the pole of the book". Li Kuchan believes that Chinese freehand paintings are written and Western paintings are painted, and in this regard, China is superior to the West. This is manifested in the transformation of "integrating the beauty of results" and "the beauty of means", and the integration of "space art" and "time art". The combination of calligraphy and painting is precisely the opportunity and key to this change.
Li Kuchan said: "If you don't understand the art of calligraphy, if you don't practice calligraphy, you don't understand the aesthetics of capitalization and freehand." Therefore, Li Kuchan is unique in the "painter's character" of Chinese calligraphy art. Li Kuchan has become a simple, thick, wind god, and gentle grass art in the past few decades of searching for monuments.
▲Morning Finch Diagram
▲First sunny chart
▲The garden is full of spring colors
▲Dong Ming Spring Dawn
▲Redstone Eagle Diagram
▲ Lanshi Myna Diagram
▲Wing diagram
▲Green Rain Crane Ang Figure
▲ Ink hermeter
▲Splash ink wind bamboo heron
▲ Three red-necked herons
▲Double crane diagram
▲Double Eagle Vision Map
▲ Same contract with the sky
▲Rain Mountain in the distance
▲Seal meaning
▲Double bird white lotus