【Viewpoint】
存形取意 梦萦高原
——Wang Wancheng's ink figure painting
Beautiful grasslands
Chunyang
Pastoral return map
flower bud
Snowy Song
Guo Zhaolong
In the past 40 years, Wang Wancheng has adhered to the western region, worked hard, and contributed to the development of ink figure painting. As a practitioner who inherits and promotes traditional culture, Wang Wancheng explores brush and ink techniques, expresses humanistic feelings, and integrates traditional philosophical concepts into the expression of art form beauty.
Among them, the work "Bell Ringing Harvest Song", which was selected for the 13th National Art Exhibition, shows the scene of a middle-aged man pulling a carriage full of haystacks home, and the seemingly close-up scenes can be divided into four levels: one is the form of a middle-aged man leading a horse, the second is a tall haystack, the third is a woman and children on the haystack, and the fourth is the sky and clouds. The lines of the white man's shirt contrast strongly with the black mass of the horse. The overall picture of the haystack is gray and the contrast with the foreground is subtly handled. The expressions of the women and the two children on the haystack are vivid, and the costumes of the women and children are painted with light ink lines, and in order to highlight the level of the figures and the distance and proximity of the picture, the boy's costumes in the middle are expressed in thick ink. In this way, a harmonious and vivid harvest scene is formed.
Wang Wancheng pays attention to social development and uses artistic ink to express the spiritual temperament of the "model of the times". In 2019, Wang Wancheng went to Gulang many times to collect wind for the creation of sand control statues, and experienced sand control labor, collected a large number of materials, and completed the work "The Backbone of Eight Steps of Sand" in 2020, and donated it to the Eight Steps of Sand "Six Old Men" Sand Control Memorial Hall. The total width of "The Backbone of Eight Steps of Sand" is 4 meters wide and 1.6 meters high, with realism and a long scroll picture, showing the group portrait of the sand control people, the close-up of the picture is based on the first generation of sand control people Cheng Hai and Zhang Runyuan, and the second generation of sand control people Guo Wangang and He Zhongqiang as the main body, the characters are thick and vivid, filled with the joy of labor; the medium and long view is the scene of piling up grass and filling in the sand, and the contemporary Yugong spirit of painting and eulogizing the protagonist who does not bow his head in the face of difficulties and dares to turn the desert into an oasis.
Tibetan-themed art works accompany Wang Wancheng's artistic career, but also carry the transformation of his artistic style. After 2011, Wang Wancheng returned to thinking about the ontology of Chinese ink figure painting, that is, how to express ink and intention, and how to reconcile the contradiction between rigorous modeling and free brushwork. After accumulation and re-exploration in the early stage, he has created one after another realistic ink figure paintings that go deep into life.
The "Eyes in the Sun" series depicts the heads of Tibetans of different ages and genders. Each head is mainly expressed in the "wet painting method", and the lines are outlined in different ink colors, which is also the originality of Wang Wancheng's expression of the figures. This method of painting makes the skin tanned in the sun appear more vibrant, giving people an open-minded and cheerful feeling. Wang Wancheng skillfully expresses the faces of the characters, especially capturing the subtle differences between the corners of the eyes, mouth, nose and other parts of different faces, and contrasting and emphasizing the visual symmetry to achieve unexpected results.
Deeply rooted in tradition and concerned about the people, Wang Wancheng continues to explore the road of realist ink figure painting.
It is reported that Wang Wancheng's 40 years of Chinese painting exhibition will be held at the National Art Museum of China on April 20. (The pictures in this article are all works of Wang Wancheng)