Wang Qingzhou, a young painter, is expert in calligraphy, seal cutting and flower-and-bird painting. His pictures use techniques such as traditional Chinese realistic painting, freehand brushwork, ink painting, and heavy color, mostly with rich, gaudy or light colors. His recent creation of a number of freehand flower-and-bird paintings put more emphasis on color, and sometimes ink. It is difficult to classify this painting, as it is neither traditional boneless painting, nor the watercolor of the Western painting. So, I'd like to call it "color freehand painting" tentatively.

In ancient times the traditional Chinese painting was called "Danqing", which literally referred to cinnabar and green pigments. Color was emphasized. However, since the Tang and Song Dynasties, with the rising of literati paintings which adored ink but despised color, color gradually lost its key position in Chinese painting, especially in freehand ink painting. In contrast, color was the strength of Western painting. From the Venetian school of painting to Delacroix, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and Fauvism, the position of color began to rise gradually in the Western painting, and almost took up a leading role. Nevertheless, in the freehand ink painting of modern China, especially the flower-and-bird painting, color began to restore. Masters of Chinese painting such as Wu Changshuo, Qi Baishi and Pan Tianshou combined ink and color into their freehand flower-and-bird paintings. These great Chinese painters might not have been influenced by Western painting, but mainly discovered their sense of color from the traditional Chinese painting or folk arts.

Mr. Wang, a young artist in the 21st century, living in an unprecedented era of frequent cultural and art exchange of the East and the West, has gained broad artistic vision, and a growing sense of originality. He has achieved good results in his previous creation of the ink or color paintings of flowers and birds, but he is not satisfied, still continue to explore new methods of expression of painting. His color freehand painting not only inherits traditional Chinese painting, including painter Yun Nantian's Mogu paintings of flowers, but also absorbs the color of the Western paintings including Impressionism, Fauvism and Expressionism. Although he may not consciously imitate a certain genre or school, his sense of color and expression of color tend to be similar to these genres and schools. Like the ink, color itself has some certain expressive force, and is even more straightforward and stronger in expressing the emotion of humans. Wang Qingzhou's freehand painting of color puts color performance in an unusually prominent position. Some of his freehand flower-and-bird paintings integrate color and ink, and some are filled with color completely, which greatly differ from the traditional Chinese ink painting, and distinguish from his previous flower-and-bird paintings. Those pieces offer spectators a completely refreshing visual experience. These works have rich, strong and bright colors, and express relaxing and cheerful emotion, just like a metaphor "the easy chair"said by the French painter Henri Matisse, providing people with aesthetic pleasure. Wang Qingzhou possesses the cultivation of traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy, thus his works are not gaudy but elegant, even if he adopts the color of red and green which create sharp contrast. This reminds me of the plaque titled "Cheerful Redness and Bright Greenness" in Yihong Garden in A Dream of Red Mansions, a Chinese literary canon.

Wang Yong

researcher and Ph.D adviser

at the Chinese Academy of Arts