By the beginning of this year, Lin Dongfu's studio had been moved to Hongqiao Road for more than three years, and in this room that was originally a warehouse, the deliberately raised floor height was obviously twice as high as the usual office, just enough to allow him to hang those huge portraits of musicians in front of his eyes and face them wordlessly every day; the works painted on the old door panels were leaned against the wall, which could be pulled out from time to time, walked in, and walked farther to see the effect. Here, wrapped in an apron stained with paint, he was surrounded by jazz music all day long, painting non-stop for seven or eight hours a day, until he was awakened by the feeling of hunger. "Paint like a painter, not an actor."
Picture: Lin Dongfu in the studio The interviewee provided a picture
A thirst for knowledge
Painting is something that Lin Dongfu has always wanted to do since he was a teenager. In addition to his talent, he believed that there were some things that he could teach himself, a foreign published book" "Sketch Basics", which was the textbook for him to teach himself to paint when he was a teenager. He borrowed a human bone model from the College of Medicine, pondered and studied it, and mastered the proportions of the sketch figures when drawing. But at that time, Lin Dongfu, who had just entered the work team, had become a member of the house repair team, with nowhere to learn art from teachers and no opportunity to enter a professional art learning institution, "Why is it so difficult for me to be a painter?" Fortunately, Lin Dongfu loved to read, often took reading notes, and couldn't sleep all night because he thought about the flashing wisdom he had read in the book, so he was not engulfed by the environment.
When he was 18 years old, his mother gave him 18 yuan and asked him to buy a pair of leather shoes by himself, but he did not expect that the 18 yuan was all used by Lin Dongfu to buy books. That thick stack of books can be held back, it is also a test for teenagers, Lin Dongfu is tall, his hands are straight and holding the book, the top is against his chin, fortunately, the person who sold the book tied him up, otherwise he had to fall apart halfway. "A pair of leather shoes is not important to me, my heart is so open when I read, there is no vanity at all." The thirst for knowledge and the devotion to culture and art were the romances of the post-50s generation, and in the 1980s, their brilliance slowly appeared.
Picture: Lin Dongfu is creating a picture provided by the interviewee
The appearance of the guide
Fortunately, Lin Dongfu gradually met many very important guides in his life: Su Xiu, a famous dubbing artist at Shanghai Film Translation Studio, Qiu Yuefeng, a dubbing master, Qi Yue, a professor at the Beijing Broadcasting Academy, Su Kun, the old director of the Shanghai Theater Academy, and Matteo Massagrande, an Italian national treasure painter... These teachers are strict with themselves, and Lin Dongfu does not dare to slack off his life.
"There are several children in the teachers' families, and Mr. Qiu Yuefeng has four children, and they all use the sewing machine as a writing desk, and it is good to put the head of the machine in. When the children are asleep, they get up in the middle of the night to prepare the script. At that time, material things were scarce, but they never suffered from gain or loss in the art they loved. What I feel from the older generation of artists is the devotion to art, and the devotion to art is also loyalty to life, which is more important than anything else. ”
Matteo, a painting teacher whom Lin Dongfu admired, once told him that a true painter should be faithful to his heart and should never be pandered to and flattered. Lin Dongfu had a painting whose tone made the teacher smell a hint of business, and he solemnly told Lin Dongfu: "If you paint like this, you should no longer claim to be my student." ”
The people painted are familiar people
In fact, Lin Dongfu began to paint again, seven years ago, by chance at home alone, the brush left on the table when his daughter went out was picked up by him again, and the familiar feeling reminded Lin Dongfu of the painting time he had, and the idea of painting was re-upturned and out of control.
In a painter's village in Hungary, Lin Dongfu magically met Mateo Massagrande, who thought he had a talent for painting and encouraged him. Lin Dongfu was thrilled by the evaluation from the master of painting, and since then he has become a student of Mateo, honestly learning the Renaissance style, the European classical portraiture method, and wholeheartedly expressing the shape and god of the jazz masters with brushes and colors.
Lin Dongfu collected old black and white photos of blues and jazz legends everywhere, and the light of the photos could not be consistent with the painting, and he worked hard to translate the light and shadow of the photo into the light and shadow of the painting, restoring the color of the singer's skin from the black and white tone. Faces full of stories, not dramatic scenes of singing with microphones, but one close-up portrait after another, the ravines on the faces of long-dead musicians such as Miles Davis. "The people I paint are really everyone who has ever existed, and everyone has left their own music. I express myself through them, but not through them. ”
Pictured: Lin Dongfu and his works Courtesy of the interviewee
If this is Lin Dongfu's style, it is also his "limitation", because he "can only paint this" and paints so realistically. "The teacher said, calm down and draw in a disciplined manner." Lin Dongfu followed the instructions of the master, and drew the musicians he was familiar with in a disciplined manner, even with some trepidation, and did not expect to play tickets through them at all.
Lin Dongfu gave all his time to painting, and painting became his most important friend, just as Lu Xun said in those days, "I just spent your time drinking coffee and watching movies on writing." Lin Dongfu admitted that he "has no circle, does not enter the stream, and does not enter the boundary." Philosophically, Seneca and Montaigne allowed him to find himself; music, in turn, allowed him to never be separated from himself. Sometimes, friends from the painting industry come to greet: "Mr. Lin will paint together in the future." He also couldn't figure out what the other party's surname was, and he didn't mean it, even if he got the praise of a well-known painter: "I always thought you were painting and playing, and I didn't think you were really good at painting." ”
Surrounded by a house full of musician portraits, and the music in his ears, Lin Dongfu sighed: "The young Lin Dongfu wants to paint, and now he can, so I returned myself to the young Lin Dongfu." (Xinmin Evening News reporter Xu Yisheng)