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A Free Painting Explorer on the Air

“Paintings reflect the inner world of painters and their aesthetic feelings about the outside world, whether sorrowful, delightful, ardent or bleak. Art should go back to its root, not just try to flatter the market,” said Wang Yongsheng during an interview in a small coffee bar in Jianguomen.

Having just departed his exhibition and his distinguished guests who came to his opening at the Xidan Books Building, Wang, about 50, carefully weighed his words before speaking about a visitor he admired above all others, 90-year-old Lou Shibai, a master of Chinese painting who was once a student of the prestigious Chinese painting master Qi Baishi.

Lou was among those, including Wang’s friends, who were surprised by the paintings he showed at the exhibition. You see, Wang is known as someone who just paints in his spare time, an amateur painter; yet, the exhibition revealed that he had painted many works and that they were surprisingly accomplished.

After viewing the show, which he learned about while reading a news story in the Beijing Evening News about a new painter who would exhibit impressionistic Chinese ink paintings, Lou told Wang, “Your paintings are not easy to understand, because you use some unusual painting skills instead of traditional approaches. Traditional painting has its advantages, but it needs breakthroughs. Wang’s paintings bring some western ideas to traditional Chinese painting: they bring some modern feelings to viewers. Most of his paintings portray the world from an aerial-view, which has a different relationship with the landscape.  It’s very obvious that these are his own understandings and feelings, an expression of his true feelings for the world. This is a new trend in ink painting, a product of a new generation of painters. Traditional Chinese painting needs this kind of innovation and development; yet, but the academic painters [cannot do this because] they are too restricted. Wang’s paintings explore a new field and a different kind of feeling.”

In an inscription, he wrote: “Weed through the old to bring forth the new” to encourage Wang.

Strictly speaking, Wang’s Chinese paintings are not pure ink paintings. His works seems similar to impressionism, but they find their expression in traditional Chinese ink works. Wang named his exhibition the “Impressionistic Chinese Ink Paintings Exhibition.” It seems he is reluctant to align his paintings with Chinese landscape paintings, although he loves traditional Chinese painting, and he has carefully studied its skills and techniques and uses traditional painting materials in his work. He thinks his concepts and the content of his painting are already beyond Chinese traditional painting.

Many visitors were touched by Wang's unusual paintings. Some well-known artists and calligraphers, after viewing he exhibition, wrote to praise Wang’s art during the exhibition, including Yang Lizhou, the vice-chairman of China Artists' Association and former curator of the National Art Museum of China. Yang wrote: “Being in the sky and viewing a vast landscape” to praise Wang’s painting.

Lou said he attended the show to view the techniques used in the new paintings. He said he intends to become acquainted with some new and innovative art techniques. He appeared in the exhibition hall when the opening ceremony was near its end, when most of Wang’s friends and reporters covering the opening were about to leave, but Lou’s arrival did not go unnoticed. Yang and Wang accompanied Lou as he viewed the paintings, assisted by his wife, also in her 90s.

As Wang is an amateur painter, his works are less restricted and benefit from a fresh motivation. He didn’t even have a teacher and never received any formal painting education or training. When he was young, Wang was very fond of philosophy, art and Chinese ink painting. After he’d painted for more than 20 years, he began to think about exploring a new style of painting in his 50s. He studied paintings from western artists, such as Monet, Renoir and Degas. Absorbing the techniques from these masters, Wang expressed his philosophy and literature in his paintings based on his control of mostly black ink and water, applied with splashes. But do not look for traditional lines in the paintings: they are seldom seen.

Wang thinks this combination of western style and Chinese painting is without necessary conflict. Using ink to portray the abstract or impressionism is just like a farmer planting coffee: whether he uses a tractor or a hoe, the implement used is a tool. An ink brush is a tool and ink serves as the language. The aim is to express an inner world, a response to the outside or so-called “objective” world.

This makes Wang an explorer of traditional Chinese painting and western painting.

His works escape the traditional, restricted field of painting when addressing the “eight objects of the world”: mountains, water, humans, animals, flowers, birds, insects and fish. His works touch every aspect of the world. From natural and realistic to the abstract, some of his paintings refer to the forms of clouds, natural scenes, contradictions, theories of unity theory and even the movement of the universe.

Wang’s special angle partly arises from his unique opportunity to experience his world, and this arises from his job. As the publicity department director at the Beijing Capital International Airport, he has lots of chances to view the world from the air. This relation with the world inspires his work.

Since he sometimes portrays the abstract in his paintings, this makes his paintings hard to understand, a departure from traditional Chinese painting. But Wang insists that painting is not bound to be a faithful facsimile of the objective world. Modern painting is no longer required to play the role of recording the natural world; it can leave some space for the viewer to think and re-create. He said a painting should be an expression of the happiness, depression or confusion encountered by an artist in his relation with the outside world. If a viewer understands the painter’s feelings, communication will have been achieved. So he calls his painting a black and white reflection of his heart.

Since he does not feel bound by the limitations and worries of the market, Wang said he is free to explore his reality in his own way.