In the history of Chinese painting, many talented and courageous painters boldly broke through the traditional form, created a different style of painting, and then led to the progress and development of Chinese painting. The combination of work and writing has been explored and successfully pursued, and has received wide attention in today's society.
Mr. Chen Yishui was born in 1940 in Jiangtian, a thousand-year-old cultural town in Changle City, Fuzhou, Fujian Province. In the ancestral hall built in the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty, the portraits of the ancestors of the past dynasties and the plaques of the sages of Jinshi Xiangxian, and the poems, calligraphy and paintings of the famous masters of the past dynasties overflowing with the atmosphere of traditional culture, injected the source of culture and art into Chen Yishui's young heart; the artistic edification of Chen Zifen, a famous modern calligrapher and painter, inspired Chen Yishui's interest in painting and artistic talent; the beautiful landscape and pastoral countryside in his hometown inspired Chen Yishui to get close to nature, love life, and pursue the childlike innocence of truth, goodness and beauty; The yearning for playing in the water and appreciating fish made those vivid and timeless life pictures stored in his naïve mind become the source of his expression, and it was with this artistic love and benevolent heart that he embarked on the road of painting, and then entered the best realm of painting fish. In 1958, he was admitted to the Fuzhou Arts and Crafts Institute with excellent results, and studied Chinese painting of flowers, plants, fish and insects under the famous silk painting master Lin Yichen, which consolidated the foundation of traditional painting and mastered the pen and ink language skills of gongbi painting. After he returned to Fuzhou, he began to focus on the creation of fish and water paintings, and received the guidance of Zheng Naijun, Pan Zhulan, Tang Guoguang from Fujian, Wu Qingxia from Shanghai, Wang Qi from Beijing, and other masters of Chinese painting. From the meticulous traditional Chinese painting, after long-term exploration and tempering practice, he created his own brush and ink system, and creatively took "fish and water blending" as the theme, forming a unique modern brush and ink art. On the basis of inheriting and innovating traditional Chinese painting methods, he is eclectic, absorbing the color composition concept of Western painting methods, and has made successful innovations in the language of brush and ink, aesthetic style, changes of modern light and shadow, as well as the composition and blending of whole and hue, so that the picture has achieved the fusion of color and ink, and the beauty of form and spirit, and has become a unique master of fish and water painting.
"Floating Lotus Nine Ru", 82x76cm, "Wealth and Wealth", 82x76cm
Chen Yishui believes that artistic creation should not only have authenticity, but also seek innovation and change, and bring forth the new. Over the years, his painting style has evolved and sublimated. He said, "Chinese painting is an honest art, and there are strict norms in the treatment of the color and space layout of brush and ink. In the history of Chinese painting, there are not many people who can really innovate on the basis of learning from the ancients and make their works present a new look. A painter can only break a new path by relying on his firm artistic pursuit, and finding a new way to borrow from the past and open up the present through understanding and practice. Over the past decades, under the guidance of this artistic concept, he has undergone many changes and innovations on the road of fish painting, so that his works have presented four distinctive characteristics: First, "the integration of fish and water" has opened up a new realm in the history of fish painting, highlighting the aesthetic conception of fish and water interdependence. The second is the innovation of "flowers and fish reflecting each other", which creates a three-dimensional beauty of flowers and fish shadows between fish water and flowers. The third is the "combination of work and writing", which paints the intimacy between the image and the brushwork, and the sense of truth and agility. Fourth, the "symbiosis of art and culture" in the world of fish and water, through the intervention of poetry and calligraphy, the artistic conception of the painting is sublimated.
Chen Yishui's works are filled with a strong cultural atmosphere, which sublimates the connotation of the works to an elegant realm, which comes from the author's years of learning and inheritance of traditional Chinese culture. In particular, while conscientiously studying the skills of famous fish painters in Chinese history, such as Yuan Yi of the Five Dynasties, Liu Yu of the Song Dynasty, and Bada Shanren of the early Qing Dynasty, he also paid attention to the study of the cultural meaning of ancient paintings, and conscientiously studied relevant poems and songs. During this period, the versatile Chen Yishui injected all his cultural hobbies into painting fish, making the fish in his pen more melodious. He believes that in traditional Chinese culture, fish means "auspicious and wealthy", "more than every year", "more than auspicious" and many other words containing the homonym of the word "fish", which have been borrowed by famous fish painters in the past dynasties. With the help of these words with auspicious meanings, Chen Yishui dedicates his love to the public with his brush. In the painting of mandarin fish, "Harmony is Precious", "Prosperity is Surplus" for pomfret, "Auspicious Celebration" for crucian carp, and especially "Icing on the Cake" and "Carp Leaping Dragon Gate" for painting koi, not only show the painter's superb brush and ink skills, but also contain rich traditional Chinese culture. Appreciating his work "Koi Flowers", the painter paints the koi carp that has rarely been painted in history with shades of dry and wet tones and delicate brushstrokes, coupled with the blue-green as the base tone of the pond water and lotus, so that people can not only see the beauty of the dancing of the fish, but also feel the vastness of the water and sky world, and also feel the meaning of harmony and beauty in the splendid process.
Begonia Leaping Brocade, 82x76cm, Pear Blossom Scales, 82x76cm
Chen Yishui's paintings of fish, water, flowers and birds can bring people a simple and natural feeling, which is a high degree of refinement after the painter "looks at things with me", and what is sustenance and exudes during this period is a kind of ordinary emotion, which makes the paintings have an approachable tone and a strong breath of life. Appreciating his "Fish Music Picture", the painter painted 9 fish swimming in different postures with different brushwork techniques and different shades, and used his own special technique to draw the pond water and ripples created by light ink.
Innocence is also a characteristic of Chen Yishui's paintings. This is like the "Wonderful Hands, One Luck, One Taiji" in Taijiquan, so that all the fire, brute force, bright energy, and external manifestations are transformed into an indispensable and natural state, and this state can only appear when his own spirit reaches "dedication and softness". The work "Lotus Brocade" embodies a kind of Lao Zhuang philosophy. In the picture, the painter uses the pond water of Biwei and the lotus lotus to set off the koi fish swimming in the trend, and the innocent freedom of the fish in the swimming reflects the painter's own mental state of mind and object travel. From the perspective of technique, the painter has made breakthroughs and innovations in painting techniques in many aspects, such as the arrangement of composition and layout, the selection of fish types, and the application of brush and ink colors. In particular, the 9 fish are chased and frolicked in a circle, forming an overall layout like a Taiji diagram, and taking the nine characters as the highest mathematical theory of Taoism, which further deepens the cultural connotation of Chinese philosophy and sublimates the connotation of the painting to the spiritual realm of the unity of heaven and man.
"More than Lotus Brocade" 82x76cm "Kapok Scales" 82x76cm
Appreciating the interest in life contained in Chen Yishui's fish paintings, we can see that he is good at capturing the aesthetic pursuit of life, which is the result of his insistence on "foreign teachers create nature and gain the source of the heart" for many years. He adheres to the art theory of learning from nature and insists on sketching in rivers, lakes and seas. In addition to observing the living habits and various postures of the fish, he also wrote about the water waves and water potential of rivers, lakes and seas, as well as a variety of flowers and trees that match them. After absorbing the perception of these natural objects, he reproduced them on paper through the spiritual filter and his own painting memories, and then burst out into artistic masterpieces that blended with each other's beautiful and touching fish, water, flowers and plants, and then sublimated them to a new height of harmony and harmony in Chinese culture.
Li Zhen of the Ming Dynasty wrote in "The Theory of Childlike Heart": "The husband is childlike, and the sincerity is also ...... The world's best text, there is no one who is not out of childlike innocence. "This is true not only for literary creation, but also for painting creation. Looking at Chen Yishui's fish paintings, the kind of free and spontaneous ease shows his pure feelings, pure childlike innocence and the pursuit of returning to the truth. He gives the childlike innocence to the fish in his pen, so that the dynamics and artistic conception of swimming freely in the rivers, lakes and seas are sublimated to an elegant and beautiful level. With a childlike heart, he can give his imagination wings and give birth to the aura of artistic creation. The most touching thing about Chen Yi's water fish painting is his childlike hair and childlike atmosphere. This kind of breath seems to be able to bring back the innocent childhood state of mind, and feel the ease and ease of forgetting things and me. In his work "Lixiang Fish Music", he painted 9 cute carp with smart brushstrokes. In the picture, the fish play in a variety of wonderful postures, playing with flowers and fruits, the form is realistic, smart and natural. In the meantime, the water of the pond is clear and clear, and the waves are clear and clear, showing a peaceful and clear state and an intimate atmosphere with people. This is a high degree of refinement after the painter "looks at things with me". The truth of the physical nature of the fish in the painting has been integrated with the artist's mental nature. It is this emotion that gives Chen Yishui's paintings an approachable tone and a strong sense of life. In the works "Pear Blossom Brocade Scales", "Rich Carp", "Begonia Brocade", "Water Floating Silver Carp" and other works, the fish frolic in the clear and blue water under the flowers and plants such as pear blossoms, peonies, and begonias, showing a mood of scattered and leisurely, bringing a positive sense of optimism to the viewer. In this kind of work, the painter pursues the effect of being wonderful and full of natural taste, and uses chic brushstrokes to convey his emotions and moods. He strives to show the aesthetic characteristics of simplicity, lightness, frankness and natural fun, so that fish, ponds, flowers and fruits are like beautiful notes, playing natural music together. These works of his are childlike and childlike, which can make people forget the toil of life, get rid of impetuous mood, and find the pure mentality that is gradually disappearing in the process of returning to the truth, which is the reason why his works are deeply loved by the public.
(Text/Li Xinping)
Artist bio
Chen Yishui, born in 1940, a native of Changle, Fuzhou, a national first-class artist, a former military painter, has been engaged in art for more than 60 years, specializing in Chinese painting "fish and water fusion", in the traditional and careful painting, with a unique way of expression, for the model of painting fish.
He has made special reports in hundreds of newspapers and magazines at home and abroad, CCTV, Fujian TV, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. His essays "Looking at Traditional Chinese Fish Culture from Fish Painting" and "Exploring the Fish Painting in Water" were published in Art Guide magazine. The "Fine Arts" magazine of the China Artists Association published the album "Chen Yishui, China's Outstanding Artist", the China General Administration of Publication approved the Tianjin People's Fine Arts Publishing House to publish the collection of "China's Unique Artist: Chen Yishui's Painting of Fish", and the Fujian Fine Arts Publishing House published "China's Unique Fish Painting Collection of Chen Yishui". He has held more than 20 solo exhibitions at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Zhuhai, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and in Singapore, San Francisco, and New York. "Fish and water blend" is welcomed by the world and is known as "the first fish in the world".
Work appreciation
《朝晖鱼乐》95x176cm
《牡丹九如》68x138cm
《秋苇碧波》93x172cm
《硕果累累鱼也乐》95x176cm
《鱼乐花富贵》95x215cm
《九锦添牡丹》68x68cm
More than a Prosperous Year, 68x68cm
《枇杷游锦》68x68cm
《葡畔鱼乐》68x68cm
Hundred Fish Fighting for the Top, 180x118cm
Leaping Forward with Scales, 176x95cm
《锦鳞兴盛》180x132cm
《锦上添花》182x136cm
《锦添花》180x118cm
The article is transferred from the all-media platform of People's Daily