Tong Yan Lecture Hall2021-09-27
Tong Yan, owner of Morutang, male, born in 1969 in Chaohu, Anhui, is a member of the China Artists Association, and became the vice chairman of the Chaohu Artists Association in December 2003, under the guidance of his father Tong Xuanjiao (a member of the China Beauty Association), and his ancestor Tong Xuehong was a member of the Xiling Printing Society in the early days of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
Don't have a mountain and water mood in the cave sky
——Tong Yan's freehand landscape painting appreciation
Text/Fang Hua
There are many painters around me, and there are many artists from all over the world, but Tong Yan's works have unique characteristics in the many paintings I have seen, and the recognition is high, which makes me pay attention.

Chinese painting has a history of thousands of years, and has formed traditional styles, techniques, laws and aesthetics in many aspects such as pen, ink, framing, composition and so on. Tradition is the expression of the inheritance of historical development and the pulse of culture, which needs to be vigorously inherited and carried forward. However, from a certain point of view, tradition often forms a custom, habit, and stereotype, which restricts and constrains innovation and breakthrough. This is also the root of the similarity and commonality of many Chinese paintings, which expresses a single and monotonous expression.
Of course, the innovation of art is based on tradition, and to talk about innovation without tradition is the wood without source water and no root. Tong Yan's paintings have deep traditional roots. His ancestor Tong Xuehong is a famous artist in China, famous for printing, books and paintings, and is known as one of the "Eight Elders of Anhui Art In the 20th Century". His painting skills are very skilled, as Liu Haisu's "painting disciple", the style of painting is elegant, the composition is fresh, the brushwork is equally important, and there is a strong sense of life. Because his chrysanthemums are well painted, people at the time also have the reputation of "child chrysanthemums". His father, Tong Xuan, is the main member of the "Three Hundred Chinese Paintings" of the China Artists Association, and hundreds of his landscape paintings have been exhibited and collected in more than 40 countries such as Southeast Asia, the Americas, Europe and Australia, as well as Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and more than 30 works have been exhibited and awarded in the national exhibition sponsored by the China Artists Association, and have been invited by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles to participate in the national invitation exhibition of famous artists for many times. In such a painting family, Tong Yan has been learning to paint with brushstrokes since he was a child, and his traditional painting techniques and techniques have laid a solid foundation.
Most of Tong Yan's works are freehand landscapes in landscape paintings, and they are also the "different peaks" in his works. Freehand landscapes tend to focus on the overall general idea, with little attention to detail. However, looking closely at Tong Yan's works, its line skills are profound, the sense of powerful paper back, and the pen is calm and solid, so-called: a stroke into the Road, the pen into the Road. It can be seen that it has been passed down from family and has learned the traditional skills of its predecessors.
Lines are important for Chinese landscape painting. Lines are the foundation of Chinese painting and the basic criterion for measuring the quality of Chinese painting. Admiring Tong Yan's works, the painter reflects different mountain structures through lines, creates different forms and formal beauty, and depicts the painting situation vividly. From the trajectory of his work line, we can peek into the painter's painting ability, psychological state and taste, and the essay ink enters the artistic conception created by it, and appreciates the charm of Chinese landscape painting.
The linguistic core of Chinese painting is "pen and ink". Chinese landscape painting attaches great importance to the painter's own painting skills, because it mainly pays attention to the perfect combination of pen and ink. Without ink, the technique of the pen cannot be expressed; similarly, without the pen, the ink cannot be displayed. The so-called "magic of ink, all out of the pen." The pen is "bone", the ink is "meat", the pen is full of ink fun, and the ink is full of pen feelings, in order to express it perfectly. Guan Tong Yan's paintings, there are many ink techniques, almost every painting uses the methods of breaking ink, accumulating ink, splashing ink, dry ink, dipping ink, etc., so that his paintings have a strong sense of three-dimensionality, deep feeling, it is really strange, interesting, and dashing.
In the face of Tong Yan's landscape paintings, a significant feature that I feel very strongly and have to focus on is the unevenness and asymmetry of the composition of the picture. The first is the asymmetry of the composition of the whole picture, as if some places have not arrived with ink, there are defects, and this mutilated beauty is like a fragment that has been passed down for thousands of years, full of ancient meaning and deep meaning. Secondly, most of the objects in his paintings are oblique, including inky mountains, pavilions with cornices, leisurely small bridges and stone paths... In this way, breaking the traditional non-stability, instead of violating the sense of harmony, it creates a momentum of "eighteen thousand feet on the roof, and wants to fall to the southeast", and a kind of "thick makeup is always appropriate to talk about smearing". It is also this asymmetry that breaks the traditional smooth composition and pen-and-ink expression that forms Tong Yan's special painting language, which distinguishes it from many painting works and forms its own pen-and-ink expression method and characteristic style.
Chinese painting, like other traditional art categories, its development direction is not subject to human will, especially in this era of rapid development, it is following the pace of the times, breaking free from the shackles of the previous more unified and "formatted" mode, showing a rich and colorful appearance, and rapidly developing in the direction of diversification, which is also an inevitable phenomenon in the process of the transformation of Chinese painting from tradition to modernity. In the long run, this phenomenon will greatly enrich the development capacity and creative content of Chinese painting. As a result, I greatly appreciated and admired the personalized characteristic style presented in Tong Yan's works.
The development of art has always absorbed the new opportunities of the times to varying degrees, but the cultural spirit has not changed, but there are variations in the formal language. Artists who borrowed from ancient times and opened up the present, represented by Wu Changshuo, Qi Baishi, Huang Binhong, and Pan Tianshou, it is on the basis of inheriting the tradition that they appropriately absorb the new winds of the times, maintain the national characteristics and cultural traditions of Chinese painting, and create a new tradition of Chinese painting. It is hoped that Tong Yan can continue to maintain the heart of "seeking differences", give play to his personality characteristics, and on the basis of being familiar with the laws of art and deeply familiar with the magic of Chinese painting, he will be pedantic and talented, and he will continue to break through and improve the characteristics of his works, and gradually form his own more unique and distinctive artistic style.
From ignorant teenager to mature middle age, painter Tong Yan has tirelessly and diligently pursued the mystery of pen and ink and the connotation of artistic conception through decades of study and painting of landscapes. His landscape paintings are brush and inky, the painting style is simple, elegant and beautiful, and the realm is far-reaching. However, they are not limited to the rules, dare to break the "stability", and enter the ancient and the new. Among them, it is not only infiltrated with the wonderful understanding of the painter's fasting and recuperation, but also soaked with the painter's cultivation skills.
In recent years, Tong Yan has taken the hometown Chaohu Water Town, the Taihu Lake Stone Garden Landscape and the New Countryside Green Water and Green Mountains Ecological Environment as the creative themes to express the current beautiful life, praise the new era and new atmosphere, and also embody a painter's sincere and warm artistic feelings for his hometown, the times, life and nature.
On the whole, Tong Yan's freehand landscape works, full of personality characteristics and distinctive characteristics, have created a big impression, big feeling, big weather, big mood for us, and his works embody the quiet and distant atmosphere of Chinese culture, which is profound, intriguing, and thought-provoking.
(Author: Fang Hua, member of China Writers Association, vice chairman of Hefei Writers Association in Anhui Province, chairman of Chaohu Writers Association.) ）
Appreciation of works
Award-winning experience
In 2018, his work "Rain Over the Garden" participated in the Chinese Painting Exhibition of "Hanfeng Tang Yun, Ink Chang'an" of the China Artists Association, and won the qualification (the highest award);
In 2018, his work "Dream Garden Over the Rain" was selected into the "Freehand Suzhou" Chinese Painting Biennale of the China Artists Association;
In 2019, his work "Southern HeavenLy Sacred Land" was selected for the first national exhibition of Chinese paintings and landscape works of the China Artists Association "Damei Guanyin Mountain";
In 2019, his work "Xiongguan Mandao True as Iron" participated in the second Jingshang Danqing - National Exhibition of Chinese Paintings of the China Artists Association and won the membership qualification (the highest award);
In 2020, the work "Qinghui" was selected for the Canal Painting Vein of the China Artists Association Nantian Wind Bone - 2020 Yun Nantian Art Biennale;
In 2020, his work "Poetic Jiangnan" was selected as the source of Chinese beauty collaboration - the second Exhibition of Chinese Paintings;
In 2009, "Old Garden" was selected for the 3rd Anhui Fine Arts Exhibition
In 2019, "Dream seeking in the Old Garden" was nominated for the 7th Anhui Fine Arts Exhibition
In 2009, "Silver Screen Summer" was selected for the large-scale group painting creation of Anhui Mountain Huishui (Provincial Museum Collection)
2015 "Nine Blessings and Half Soup" Collection of Chaohu Ships of the Chinese Navy
In 2019, "Three Sides of Qingshan and One Lake" and "Great Lake Famous City Innovation Highland" were collected by chaohu municipal organ center
In 2020, "Gengzi Years" was donated by Hefei Charity Federation to the Collection and History Museum of Anyi First Affiliated Hospital
2021 "Set Sail" (Centennial Fanghua) Chaohu City Library Collection