Modern Art of West and East

When we look at art in the modern time, we can see that the environment of art creation has more freedom than any previous generation, art can now not only be of painting itself but be rendered in artistic installation, behavioural art etcetera etcetera……But is it now an old-fashion thing to talk about oil-painting itself?

At the current time, within the field of oil-painting, we can see it is full of different concepts with some of these works sometimes being difficult to understand, for example abstract painting.

I want modern art to be something simple, with warmth and beauty being the main ideas of my own art work. I believe oil painting should show the advantage of this type of painting itself, which is that it allows you to paint the subject realistically in shape and colour.

Oil painting itself can not only show a readable image, but also reveal the character of the artist who painted it, you draw your understanding of the subject within the painting, which means you can do it in a way that is not exactly the same as the thing itself.  

This is kind of similar to free hand traditional Chinese painting, where in modern times everyone can draw the same object in their own way, with different understandings of the world making each work unique.

I believe that modern art should possess your own unique character, but should also able to be recognized as what it is, a famous traditional Chinese painter Qi Baishi said that when you comment upon an art work ”if you draw the painting in a way that is totally different to the real subject, it is cheating. If you draw the object exactly the same as the real thing, it is a kind of fluttering”. This saying also describes my idea toward oil painting.

So what is the difference between traditional Chinese painting and Western oil painting? In terms of oil painting, you can use all range of different colors and hundreds of strokes to paint a subject, while in traditional Chinese painting you use only limited colors and strokes.

I think traditional Chinese painting should draw the meaning of the subject more while oil painting as I mentioned above should show more of it’s own advantages in describing reality in terms of both diverse colour and accurate shape.

Traditional Chinese Painting in Modern Art Times

To make things clearer, I will give you two examples to state what oil painting and traditional Chinese painting look like, they both have the same theme which is floral in nature, and you can compare directly how the two different types of painting work, which is clearly readable, conveying the artist’s character and showing advantages of the two different types of the painting.

The first painting of mine is a traditional Chinese painting of a lotus flower, you can see it is completed in traditional Chinese ink with no use of other colors, which shows how the deepness of Chinese ink reflects colour, and how different strokes influence the building of an image.

In traditional Chinese painting black ink can be adjusted in colour by differing the amounts of water added, compared with oil painting traditional Chinese work is often less colorful, as you will see in the second painting in which I use hundreds of different oil colors to express the same subject of a flower, and the use of many more strokes in the oil painting is clearly seen.

From my perspective another difference between traditional Chinese painting and oil painting is that traditional Chinese painting places greater emphasis upon the painter’s understanding of the subject, as the painting is less colorful and less strokes are used to complete the work.

Comparison to Oil Painting

Oil painting as you can see will more adhere to the real subject as it can be expressed with more colours and more strokes which is truly a great advantage of oil painting.

This can be seen from my own oil painting work, which not only accurately describes the flowers and surrounding environment, but also conveys my understanding of the world, which is a warm and positive style and attitude of life.

In conclusion no matter traditional Chinese painting or oil painting all need to be complete within the context of the artist’s understanding of the world, while at the same time carrying the respective advantage of the different painting methods in the modern art world.

You can see more of my art work in our art gallery on our webpage and see more art and fashion blog articles here.