From the origin of art, from the green of childhood
In 1937, Liu Xinsheng was born in Wujin, Changzhou, to an ordinary rural family. His father, a carpenter, worked in Shanghai and brought back some Shanghai New Year paintings during the New Year, and Mr. Nian was very interested in the New Year paintings: the content of the New Year paintings reflected was some of the running halls in Shanghai at that time, the scene of horse racing was vivid, and some reflected the opera characters, he was only seven or eight years old, always fascinated. "A cousin next door is my idol, and he likes to color book illustrations and paint them beautifully."
"In the countryside, during the New Year, the housewives of the neighbors would visit each other to help make pastries. I followed my mother to the neighbor's house to play. After eating a rice ball, I still want to eat, I am sorry to ask the neighbor again, so I used mud on the door of the person's house, drew an exactly the same rice ball, the neighbors laughed after seeing it, and said, Ah, he still wants to eat! So I got another rice ball. That should be my first artwork (laughs)."
Liu Xinsheng once said: "I really like the beautiful and rich lines of trees in winter, and the many small vine-like creatures that climb on the trunks, and these feelings arouse my pursuit of new expressive techniques." "This special love and understanding of the grass and trees has already taken shape when I was young. After reading, spring break hiking, other students are buying food, Liu Xinsheng is only interested in picture books, trees, lotus roots, distant mountains, just simple pictures and objects, but also love to let go. "Probably because the memories of the countryside since I was a child are all pastoral, forest, river, bamboo forest, the beauty of the natural landscape has a deep impact on the shaping of my aesthetic taste." Those who are familiar with Liu Xinsheng's works know that the countryside and the countryside, he painted all his life.
At the age of ten, his family moved to Shanghai. "On the first day of shanghai, I still remember the neon lights and posters of foreign brands on the street, colorful and dazzling, and the visual impact was very strong, and the whole person was stunned."
Coming to the school in Shanghai, the literature and art courses were enriched, and the interest in art was broadened. Adhering to the talent of the carpenter's father, Liu Xinsheng's fingers are dexterous and good at craftsmanship, "the kind of bamboo dragonfly that rubs with both hands and whirls - flying out of the distance at once is what I am best at." Landscape painting he is also very interested, there is a family in the alley hanging landscape painting is extremely beautiful, he often detours to see, go home to learn from self-entertainment, Moso bamboo painted one painting after another, the home hanging everywhere. In reading, the subjects related to intentional thinking, composition, painting, and handicraft, he always ranked among the best; science was very difficult, "mathematics, chemistry, physics, the answer to the question is that I can't memorize it." "When I was in high school, because the science subject was too weak, Liu Xinsheng fell behind at home.
Studying famous teachers, sweat watering fang thrives
Fortunately, before the end of his reading career, a turning point in his life had already occurred. In an art class, the teacher taught Western painting. As soon as the Mona Lisa was revealed, fifteen-year-old Liu Xinsheng felt the exotic aesthetic shock to the senses: he clearly saw the woman in the painting who was given a mysterious smile, and even her folded hands were smiling quietly. The teacher's paintings have also been seen privately, just a simple banana, but even the black spots on the skin are vivid. "Completely immersed in the world of Western painting." Liu Xinsheng said. The spark of art is in the heart of a teenager, and the cluster cannot be extinguished.
One day, my father's friend saw an advertisement for admissions to the Shanghai Shanhe Fine Arts Institute on the street and rushed to tell him. The Shan He Art Research Institute is located in a bungalow on Yan'an Middle Road, and as soon as you enter, the molecules in the building are very different from the outside world. "It's a completely different world, plaster statues, Venus, David, Laocon... There are also many students who are drawing portraits. I stood there stunned for half a day, so fascinated that I knew that I must take the road of painting and painting. ”
The year he entered the institute, Yanagi was 16 years old. He became the fastest-improving student in the institute, riding his bicycle to the studio early in the morning to practice sketching, and it was noon when he looked up. The teachers all went home to eat, and Mr. Who accidentally did not bring money for the meal simply saved a meal, walked around the street twice, stood at the door of the institute, and became the first student to open the door in the afternoon. The teacher asked, did you eat at noon? I replied, I have eaten, I have eaten noodles! ”
Under the careful guidance of zhang meisun, Fang Xuelu and Wang Tingqi of the institute, Liu Xinsheng studied sketching, watercolor, landscape, still life and portrait for three years. Teacher Zhang Meisun was more than 60 years old at the time, and one morning he painted a snow scene and eagerly showed it to us at the institute, and everyone appreciated it together, and then he went to work. One year in the harsh winter, Teacher Zhang Meisun was painting in the field, the weather was cold, and his body was frozen in the evening. He brought wine with watercolor paint and finished sketching while drinking to keep warm. Teacher Zhang once said that after retirement, he would travel the country to sketch in various places. This sentence has always been imprinted in my heart. ”
At that time, Liu Xinsheng had entered the study of watercolor sketching, and often went to the field with the teacher to sketch. As long as it is a little bit of natural weather in Shanghai, he has run all over the place with a sketch board on his back. "My family lives not far from Zhongshan Park, and I can carry out almost every tree in Zhongshan Park. Mother said, Zhongshan Park is your mother's home, you should paint there and don't come back. After more than half a century, my brother accompanied me to Zhongshan Park again, and actually found a few French plane trees that I had painted when I was young, which had become towering trees. I remember that after painting it at that time, Teacher Wang Tingqi liked it very much, said that he could strive for publication, and gave it a name: "Cultivating New Students". When I got home, I actually turned over this painting. "Sketching abroad has also become his lifelong persistence, Lhasa, Hainan, the Pamir Plateau, Qinghai Lake, Xishuangbanna, Turpan and Altay... No matter the cold or heat, until today.
Ten years of fault, the jokes of the world have their own solutions
In 1956, at the age of 19, Liu Xinsheng came to Anhui to work as an art editor in Anhui Culture Daily, and he only knew how to draw pencil sketches on plaster, how to paint watercolor sketches in the countryside, and knew nothing about art editing. So I often went to consult the painters, and even asked Xu Zihe to guide the illustrations for the newspaper. "Working for 8 hours, I always feel unaccustomed, I want to sketch, the leader specially approved two afternoons a week to go out to sketch, so often go to Xiaoyaojin, Bao Gongci Park and other places to sketch." Even if you travel for business, you will not interrupt sketching. ”
A few years later, Liu Xinsheng was transferred to Tongling City to work, and happened to meet two classmates from Shanghai, who had been a student of Mr. Ran Xi, a freehand watercolor, which brought New Influence to Liu Xinsheng. Under the influence of Ran Xi's painting style, Liu Xinsheng has gradually developed a sense of personal watercolor style, some critics have looked at his paintings and bluntly said that they are "watercolors with new ideas", and the editorial department of Anhui Literature has specially commissioned two of his works, "On the Lake" and "Green Field", to be published on the color center page. "Once I went to the unit canteen to buy meal tickets, and the comrade who sold the meal ticket pressed a cut "On the Lake" under the glass plate on the table.
And when Liu Xinsheng's "freehand watercolor" style was still in its infancy, the Cultural Revolution broke out.
"Ten years of the Cultural Revolution, I was really revolutionary, I felt that my Western paintings were 'petty bourgeois atmosphere', the environment did not allow you to paint, I did not have the heart to paint, and burned most of the paintings." Including the sketches that carried water and painting tools to climb the Tiandu Peak of Huangshan Mountain, they were all burned. There is also a sketch of the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge, and out of consideration for the aesthetics of the composition, he partially covers the bridge deck with the jets of the bridge train. His works were published in Anhui Daily. Readers wrote letters, fiercely pointing out that the work was "shelling the Yangtze River Bridge", which put the newspaper under great pressure. "The leader asked me through the organization, is your painting still there, I said yes, the leader said, there is something wrong, you hand over the painting and we will take a look." I handed it over. As for the reason for the painting, I only learned about it at the end of the Cultural Revolution. "The ten-year creative fault brought about by the Cultural Revolution is, after all, to make the best years a joke of the world."
Interpretation of thoughts, casual and enjoy the art
After entering the stable period of style, Liu Xinsheng created high yields and diverse creative forms. The watercolor works "White Birch Series", "White Horse Series", "Mountain Soul Column", "Winter Love Series", "Mountain Village Series" and so on have participated in national and international watercolor exhibitions many times, and have held solo or group exhibitions in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Fuzhou and Hefei, and have been exhibited in Bulgaria, France, Belgium and Singapore, and some works have been collected by the National Art Museum of China. Some people commented that his creation was "a watercolor painting with the spirit of modern art and the charm and personality of Chinese art".
In addition to watercolor, he also loves sketching.
"Now I like pen sketching the most, and I spent more than 40 days in Europe one year, drawing seventy or eighty sketches. Sometimes I paint a sketch oil painting, you see this Indian hairdresser, is the subject I wanted to paint when I was in India, refer to a picture of the red-bearded old man in an atlas, I got inspired, and I painted it myself. He pointed me to the finished product in a corner of the room: the red-haired, skinny Old Indian staring into the distance.
In addition to the different genres, "freehand" and "realism" also have distinct degree values in Liu Xinsheng's hands.
"My personality is more introverted, and when I was younger, I was more rigorous. Teachers such as Zhang Meisun are realistic styles, which is the earliest influence on me. Later, I liked Mr. Ran Xi's freehand watercolor; Lin Fengmian's Chinese paintings, that kind of ink painting I also liked. Freehand is a kind of complex that I was born to like, and it may be that the landscape of my hometown cultivated this preference when I was a child. I like that the works pay attention to the artistic conception, the pen and ink are concise, and the freehand writing gradually has its own system from conception to technique. Regarding the arrangement of realism and freehand, I did not deliberately do it, and let it go with the flow. ”
Sometimes he misses the three teachers of the Shan He Art Research Institute, "each of them is elegant and noble." For example, Teacher Fang Xuehu, who came to Anhui Art School to teach in his later years, was humble and solemn in every word and deed, his clothes were always neat as new, and his character was deeply respected by teachers and students. The style of these three teachers is even more important to me. ”
The influence of the teacher spread to Liu Xinsheng's attitude towards the identity attributes of the painter. He understands the mood of some painters who are eager to get their works into the market, but also insist that those who paint cannot be kidnapped by the market.
"I wasn't born in a science class, and whether it's pressure from the market or the pressure from the critics, there's a lot along the way. But in the end, I decided to go my own style, which was courage and gesture. At the same time, I have always believed that painting needs to be constantly innovated, and repetition, mediocrity, hypocrisy, and hype are not enough, which is a terrible thing. Multiple styles of experimentation and transformation, the creation will have passion. ”
While chatting, Liu Xinsheng's mobile phone and landline telephone rang at the same time, and he stood up with a shrewd voice, and answered the phone like that with his left hand mobile phone and his right hand fixed telephone handset. One phone belonged to a friend, Mr. Wang Tao, and the other was from a friend who painted landscape paintings. The two people on the phone shouted for him to exchange greetings. I smiled forward and backward, looked at the back of Mr. Liu Xinsheng happily talking on the phone, and waited for him to finish the laughter of the yue yue friends.
Appreciation of works
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