Yao's artist creation of fine brushwork with heavy colors (natural mineral on paper) represents his original style and artist creativity at their best. His Red and Blue Series of artwork showcase the unique auspicious style which has been studied and followed by many artists in China. Many of his other work also represnt the surrealist tyle.

 

 

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Di'an Fan
 

In the field of Chinese painting, the flower-and-bird themes have had a long history. The wealth of tradition has established rules for using ink and wash and standards of styles with which all flower-and-bird paintings are evaluated with. They have become both the heritages for contemporary artists and the challenges for the creative development of the flower-and-bird paintings. It has therefore become one of the tasks of the time for current painters of flower-and-bird to explore and create while carrying on the tradition.

 

Faced with such challenges, Shunxi Yao has finally development his own unique styles with persistent studies, explorations and practices. Assessed with traditional perspective, one could see the traditional spirit throughout his paintings; Viewed with modern aesthetical standards, his artwork are full of rich new concepts as well as unique characteristics. In the realm of contemporary flower-bird painting, he has become a new comer and yet a master with eye-popping artwork again and again.

In my view, Yao’s flower-and-bird paintings have most prominently demonstrated his originality in three areas.

 

First, the integration of his capabilities with shapes and the skills of using brushes and inks. In his many years’ of academic training in shapes, he has studied different shapes of flowing-and-bird paintings in history. Not only has he applied special efforts on the shapes of the flowers and bird, he has also focused on the overall layout and the general effect of the whole painting, achieving skilled applications of shapes. Meanwhile, his flowers and birds are applied with seasoned use of brush and ink techniques. Learning from the styles of both traditional and contemporary masters and practicing extensively and persistently, he has developed solid use of brushes with rich applications of inks. His artwork appears beyond his age with seasoned appeal and solid connotation.

 

Second, the integration of ink and wash with fine brushes. Many modern artists would focus on either fine brush style or impressionistic style, but his exploratory vision touches on both. Started with impressionistic style after mastering the macro impressionistic techniques, he goes on to study the applications of flower-and-bird painting with fine brushes. Consequently, he has created artwork with both fine brush style and impressionistic styles, and also developed unique styles of fine brushes with impressionistic elements which has become his outstanding contribution to art. Standing in front of his work, we could feel the delicate treatment with gorgeous colors, consistent with fine brush style, while appreciating the expansive effect and boldness, typical with impressionistic style, a quality rarely seen among today’s artists.

 

Third, the integration of drawing from nature and creativity. The various flowers and bird in his work, especially those rarely seen in other artists’ paintings, traditional or contemporary, are all derived from nature. I know that every year Yao would go to suburban areas to collect materials for his work, or to travel to the frontier villages in the south with his students to draw from natures while teaching artistic practices. The China Central Academy of Fine Arts has always upheld the trinity principle of integrating tradition, creativity and drawing from nature in education, precisely what Yao has been following. Every time he comes back from these trips, he would show me what he has accomplished, with some sketches using brushes on paper longer than 10 meters. With these persistent efforts, he has cultivated the ability to carefully observe and capture the various shapes and forms of flowers and birds in nature as well as the skills to draw and present them with spirit and passion. His work created from the aggregate of these practices and sketches has demonstrated lively creativity with unconventional postures and unique ground-breaking qualities.

 

Yao’s paintings embody a mega realm of flowers and birds, as they transcend the aesthetic differentiation between tradition and contemporary styles and the different techniques between ancient and modern flower-and-bird paintings, demonstrating the expansive, outward, rich and bold artistic qualities. He usually paints the flowers and birds across the full frame, even overflowing the space on paper, presenting visions beyond limit. His flowers and plants are full and intertwined, with vivid colors and exciting splendor. He shows these characteristics at their best when superimposing the shapes of flowers and birds over wide sceneries of mountains, earth, sky as well as air, making flowers and birds a real part of the nature as they should be.

 

One can therefore conclude that Yao has instilled love and care for the nature and life when painting the flowers and birds. His artwork shows not just the manner of these flowers and birds, but rather the essence of lives from natural creation. His paintings are filled with signs of vitality and continuality of life.