Jiang Dong 丨 foreign teacher creation, the source of the heart

Jiang Dong, a native of Heilongjiang, now lives in Beijing. He studied at the first advanced study class of landscape painting of the China Artists Association and the graduate school of the China Academy of Arts. He is currently a member of the China Artists Association, the presiding painter of the "Jiangshan Xing" painter group of Chinese artists, a special researcher of the Hubei Provincial Academy of Chinese Painting, and a director of the Fifth Heilongjiang Provincial Artists Association.

His works have been collected by more than 30 art professional institutions, including China Artists Association, Chinese Painting Society, CCTV, Heilongjiang Provincial Art Museum, Hebei Provincial Academy of Painting, Hebei Provincial Artists Association, Hainan Provincial Artists Association, Shanghai Oriental Art Museum, Hubei Provincial Academy of Chinese Painting, etc. His works have participated in more than 40 nomination exhibitions, invitational exhibitions, academic exhibitions, group exhibitions and national exhibitions sponsored by the China Artists Association, and have won the highest award, silver award, bronze award and several excellence awards. He has accompanied the Chinese art delegation to Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Thailand, Japan, Vietnam and other countries for art exchanges, inspections and exhibitions.

Text/Tao Anping

The creation of foreign teachers, the source of the heart

"Foreign teachers create, the source of the heart in the middle" was proposed by Zhang Xuan of the Tang Dynasty, and these eight words subsequently became the unshakable creative law of Chinese landscape painting. The excellent works in the history of landscape painting are also without exception the product of this creative law. On the one hand, the creation of Chinese landscape painting pays attention to the imitation of nature, and at the same time emphasizes the cultivation and expression of the painter's spirit. Jiang Dong is a painter who strictly follows the creative rule of "foreign teacher creation, middle gain".

Under the atmosphere of today's landscape painting world, which is seriously detached from life, imagining out of thin air and playing with pen and ink, Jiang Dong's works have always given people a real and vivid feeling from life. The painter has gone deep into the famous mountains and rivers many times, especially from the natural landscape of Zhangjiajie. The landscapes in his pen have real life experiences, and the rewards obtained by the painter's "master's creation" are the source of infinite beauty given by nature, which is natural, vivid and broad.

In Jiang Dong's landscape paintings, small bridges flowing water, maolin cover, peaks and loops, peaks and peaks are infested, and in the ordinary, they see the depth and see the opportunity. It can be said that Zhangjiajie's grass and trees, a mountain and a water, a bridge and a house have given the painter artistic inspiration, and he deeply realizes that the pen and ink symbols of Chinese landscape painting are art forms born out of natural landscapes and the painter's reshaping of nature. The painter cannot be separated from the creation of nature, otherwise the creation will become a water without a source, a wood without a root.

While creating foreign teachers, painters pay attention to spiritual cultivation. Reading Jiang Dong's works, people are addicted to the deep, pure and muddy aesthetic imagery. The rich, subtle and unified aesthetic qualities embodied in Jiang Dong's paintings are directly related to the painter's temperament. Under the appearance of Jiang Dong's rugged northeast man, he has an extremely sensitive heart. He is rich and delicate in emotion, honest and enthusiastic, and only with such a disposition can he feel the beauty of creation and bend to the fullest. His aesthetic image is by no means different from that of some people today who are different because of their eagerness for quick success, and his paintings exude a kind of darkness, silence and tranquility in plainness and reality. This is closely related to his calm disposition, modesty and simplicity, and at the same time it is more due to his cultivation of traditional philosophical laozhuang, Zen and Buddhist aesthetic ideas.

Jiang Dong is a Buddhist disciple, he often says that he can't enter the empty door because of the dust, but the profound Buddhist thought has given him cultivation, he paints in the enlightenment, and his landscape paintings reflect his understanding of Buddhist aesthetic thought everywhere. Buddha paintings are so enlightened, so the realization of emptiness also. The Heart Sutra cloud: "Color is not different from emptiness, emptiness is not different from color, color is emptiness, and emptiness is color."

The "color" is the appearance, the reality of the truth, and if you look at it in general, then the reality of the state and the mind are not stained, the so-called swimming in the middle and enlightenment. In Jiang Dong's landscape paintings, people are often moved by the vast realm of nothingness, or from existence to nothingness. Although it is the reality of the small bridge and the flowing water, there is a kind of "empty" artistic conception, which contains the aesthetic ideas of Buddhism's great enlightenment, great compassion and great joy, and great goodness and great beauty. The cultivation of Buddhism enabled the painter Jiang Dong to have a humble heart although he was in the world, which was the most precious quality as an artist.

Zhang Geng said in "Pictorial Essence Consciousness": "The dew of the heavenly machine, but only the quiet can foresee it." The painter's quiet mentality of transcending the material world at the spiritual level is the premise for him to perceive beauty and create beauty. His works are not a truthful depiction of reality but transcendence, and his landscapes are scenes that combine personal emotions and religious complexes, as Shi Tao said, his paintings are "encountered with the gods of mountains and rivers and traced". Jiang Dong's landscape works with a sense of truth have created a pure and warm spiritual home for people who are exhausted under today's industrial civilization, which is also an important reason why his works have been affirmed.

"Foreign teacher creation, middle gain of the heart" has achieved Jiang Dong's artistic works, and the painter's exquisite pen and ink skills are the technical guarantee of the works. Chinese landscape painting has a deep tradition, thousands of years have accumulated a rich painting language, pen and ink is not only a modeling language or a tool for painters to express themselves lyrically, it contains profound cultural connotations, reflects the painter's cultivation knowledge, it has almost become synonymous with Chinese painting.

Jiang Dong has a deep recognition of this, and he attaches great importance to the embodiment of the aesthetic value of traditional Chinese pen and ink. In his works, we can see that he has been practicing tradition tirelessly for 20 years since the early 1980s, and the painter has a deep understanding of traditional modeling symbols, and the picture reflects his understanding of the traditional brush and ink form of landscape painting.

His style of works tends to the southern landscape, which is deep, flexible, cascading hills and valleys, brush and ink, and at the same time has the thick temperament of the northern landscape. His picture is extremely hooked, wrinkled, dot, and dyed, and he uses his pen to be simple and natural, and seeks change in unity. It is worth mentioning that the painter did not mud out of the past in the process of teaching traditional brush and ink, but combined with sketching to flexibly use, to create a personal style and modern sense of brush and ink language.

In front of Jiang Dong's landscape paintings, a vivid charm comes to your face. Fang Kaoru said in the "Treatise on Quiet Living Painting" that "vivid qi rhyme is the first meaning." But it will be based on qi. The vigor is sprinkled vertically and horizontally, and the machine is not delayed, and the rhyme is vivid in the meantime. Old Du Yun, the vitality is dripping and wet, is the breath rhyme vivid. "The painter has a deep understanding of this and has a prominent performance in the picture.

In Jiang Dong's picture, there is a kind of dreamy beauty of trance, which is shrouded in a hazy weather between its carefully designed interspersed interlaced trees, flowing streams, and rambling clouds. This kind of realistic beauty depends on the painter's bold and unique rendering skills. The technique of using water is a prominent artistic language in Jiang Dong's landscape works, he often uses the effect of ink and raw rice paper to create a vivid scene through large-scale wanton rendering, using the effect of ink and raw rice paper, he is good at using dry and wet contrasts to achieve the artistic effect of contrast and unity on the screen, and at the same time, the rich and subtle changes of pen and ink between the ink and ink also increase the readability of the picture.

Go through the gains and losses of human affairs, and do not glue in between. Jiang Dong, who has been painstakingly pursuing on the road of life and art, has gradually entered a better state, and in recent years, his works have been selected for many important national exhibitions and won many awards. These honors did not make him slow down the pace of pursuing ideals, as a young painter, Jiang Dong still has a long way to go, and there is also great potential for development. We look forward to this painter from the Black Land to create more and better works.

Painting appreciation