It is the mission of us artists to uncover the beauty of ordinary things and our feelings towards it with the language of painting, so as to help and enlighten people to appreciate the beauty as well.

　　We are supposed to adopt a sincere and genuine attitude toward life, art and audience.

　　Only trueness, which refers to the authenticity of emotions and art, can move people. And it is my fundamental starting point to turn the trueness of life to the trueness of art.

　　Only with a sincere and broad loving heart, rather than a self-deceiving heart with utilitarianism, can one spark off his inspiration of art by things in the boundless universe to make art everlasting.

　　You will lose yourself if you overstress people’s opinion of your works and even paint by catering to them, which will consequently restrain your talent from further developing to its fullest.

　　It is never a question for expressive forms of art to be obsolete, as any school or language of art is an eternal heritage of mankind as long as it is of high standards. However, for an artist himself, he deserves more praise for innovating and further developing the existing expressive forms of art.

　　No matter how the art of painting develops, the realistic painting will by no means decay, since it enjoys a solid foundation and strong expressiveness.

　　However, realism is not the same as initial similarity to the object by reproducing it. The vulgar and so-called realistic painting, popular in the current world yet without any authenticity and animation, is far from the art of painting or even a photo. Ridiculously, paintings of such kind are often boasted as “true paintings” or “masterpieces of eminent painters”, causing a universal misunderstanding of the real realistic painting among young painting learners, the public as well as the market.

　　The real realistic painting, as other styles of painting, still requires a painter to be equipped with specific orientation of expression, distinctive individual pursuit and appropriate form of language. A realistic painter presents his view on aesthetics and life pursuit with his own featured language of expression in the way of characters and site scenes. Hence, the core problem confronting the realistic painting remains to be the study and further development of various realistic language systems. In other words, it is not a matter of likeness and similarity to the object (which is sure to be the groundwork, though), but one of how to paint to take on a new look.

　　The difference between realism and naturalism rests in whether it discovers and uncovers the nature of the object.

　　The artistic conception, an outcome of the subjective mind of a painter and the objective scene, can mirror a painter’s outlook on life from a certain angle.

　　The success of a piece of work is not decided by its theme or size, but by its harmonious combination of the emotion and atmosphere it carries and its language form.

　　To paint a landscape sketch is not easy, as it is not a casual duplication of the object, but involves an important matter in the painting ethics—the relationship between one’s creative power and heart, and between subjectivity and objectivity.

　　The color a painter attempts to capture is neither the various and changing colors, nor the ones on his palette, but the subtle and delicate ones that vanish in the twinkling of his eyes.

　　The color reflects the aesthetic cultivation of a painter, and a good painting must be colorful but not disorderly, simple but not boring, bright but not bustling, deep but not stiff, with the two being opposite and, at the same time, unified.

　　The power of color doesn’t come from its brightness, but more from the particular comparison and contrast between coolness and warmness, and between brightness and dullness. Some dull colors seem quite bright in a distance, for the expansion of our vision enables us to see the surrounding colors simultaneously. And that’s why some paintings look gray by a closer look, yet bright in a distance.

　　A small painting draft, supposed to be not a short account, but an outline of a long article, is mainly tasked to provide some colors and the basis of color relationship required in a greater painting.

　　Among most of the painters I have ever seen, be they old or young and realistic or not, few are qualified to be called “cultivated in color”. The color in their paintings often lacks strength, accuracy and exactness, as if a bad print that lacks a palette. The inaccurate color is akin to the sound of the piano that comes not from the keyboard but the gap of it.

　　The sense of color comes more from an innate endowment and an inborn feeling beyond description than from accumulation and training. Thus, the difficulty of teaching students color rests in the unexplainable subtlety and delicacy of the color.

　　Brushwork, as a means of shaping a painting, reflects not only a painter’s personality, but also his long drilled skills. Furthermore, such strokes, an outcome of the painter’s spirit, are often filled with bursting feelings and life experiences of him.

　　If the expressiveness of painting is not based on insightful observation and analysis, but superficial flaunting of colors, the image of the painting will be false and empty, making the piece of work flashy without substance and unable to bear the test of time.

　　It is beyond the reach of ordinary painters to inject plentiful content into just a few strokes.

　　If one aspires to chase more speed, he needs to follow others first and catch up with them before pioneering his own way. It is difficult for one to register remarkable achievements, if he assumingly and arrogantly attempts to work out his own way in the very beginning. Even if he can move on ahead like this, he is far from the top of art.

　    What matters is not what you paint, but how you paint, as the latter is more difficult than the former. Therefore, a painter must practice his skills modestly and painstakingly, instead of dwarfing and offsetting his insufficiency with ideas and concepts.

　　It is impossible to cover everything in a small painting. So it is fabrication and nonsense for someone to praise a painting in all possible ways, which is the same case with advertising and packing a product to make it seem perfect, so that people are likely to doubt its authenticity. A painting is quite good even if only a tiny bit in it touches your heart. Then why would you bother to embellish it or even make up a story?

　　A painting, first, is supposed to be seen by eyes, not to be thought of by the mind. Without the painting language itself and the visual charm and enchantment, how is a painting to be listed into the art of painting? You can call it anything, such as the art of concept, the art of image, etc., but the art of painting.

　　A confident artist distains to be deliberately mystifying and is the least interested in demonstrating how profound he is, as he is well aware that plainness doesn’t mean shallowness and obscurity not profoundness, neither. Moreover, the artist is also convinced that the plain and sincere expression often demands even more confidence.

　　An opportunist painter may cause a stir over a night, but the life of his painting works is doomed to be short.

　　Chinese oil painting has a promising future and is sure to better western oil painting, as the traditional cultural heritage of China for thousands of years is beyond reach for westerners.

　　Pablo Picasso is flattered as a myth both at home and abroad, with many people, I believe, just following the suit. I once observed many of his original works in Russia and found that admittedly, he had invented some painting forms. But as far as his every piece of work is concerned, it is not as good as what people have bragged, and he is no more than a dwarf in comparison with Qi Baishi and Huang Binhong. However, why aren’t so many Chinese people aware that some of our own masters are really better than those western ones?

　　What Chinese painting looks for is the spirit lingering between the similarity and the dissimilarity, an effect just desired by the liberal style. The traditional Chinese painting is different from the western one. Traditional Chinese arts, including poetry and drama, attach much importance to the metaphysical quality, i.e. expressing their inner spirit via the external form while working on the both simultaneously, such as the poetry of Li Bai—“When the sail goes far and far to the end of the sky/ Only the Yangtze River can be seen flowing at the horizon”, the poetry of Li Shangyin—“A spring silkworm stops its silking only when it is dead/ And a candle stops its tears only after it is burnt to ashes”, and the lines in the Sichuan opera Qingtan—“The night is silent, its color sad, and the bright moonlight like water soaking the building platform: from them all come out the miserable wind.” All these point to the fact that traditional Chinese culture stresses the liberal style on all fronts by revealing people’s feelings through objects or site scenes. In terms of the liberal style, westerners are no more than following the steps of the Chinese.

　　Therefore, if a Chinese oil painter neglects the strength of his own national culture and follows westerners unconditionally, isn’t it just like begging with a gold bowl?

　　I believe that the injection of the spirit of Chinese painting into oil painting, if appropriately merged, will not tarnish the features of oil painting itself in the slightest. However it changes, oil painting can still keep its own genuine taste, so there is no question of it giving place to Chinese painting, or the impression of a Chinese painting produced by materials of oil painting.

　　Over the years, in the course of nationalizing oil painting or absorbing elements of the western painting into the Chinese painting, most people have done it “neither fish nor fowl” by making both categories of painting lose their own original characteristics, thus damaging their previous aesthetic tastes respectively. In my eyes, the only feasible way is preserving the original instinct taste of one type of painting whilst injecting the inherent spirit of the other. In this way, the painter could further improve the original painting category. Any weakening of the original flavor will end up with a nondescript item.

　　A stronger feeling is surging in my mind that it is a great shame that any school of oil painting in the world, even if it is an expressive one in liberal style, lacks the taste of Chinese calligraphy. And I even cannot imagine how wonderful it will be if Chinese brush-using skills can be contained in western paintings! Then I am encouraged to enrich the intrinsic taste of oil painting in accordance with the concepts and strokes of Chinese calligraphy, hoping that every stroke in my work would be a calligraphic touch and also a framework of the very concrete object if seen in a distance. In other words, I hope to present—with a concrete object and the brush-using skills of Chinese calligraphy—a free and easy demeanor and at the same time, to retain the original aesthetic taste of colors in oil painting.

　　If so, the realistic painting may take on a new look: the lyricism of the realistic art can be realized, supplemented by the visual impact of abstract painting.

　　The effect I expect in my painting is as follows: a painting as a whole is precise and orderly, but its expressive form is unrestrained. The fine details can be discovered in general and vice versa. Specifically speaking, the movement of brushstrokes should be unruly, pungent, clean, concise not empty, complicated yet not obscure. Every stroke is as free as possible but in it hide various contrasts, such as light and shade, coldness and warmness, thickness and thinness. And in some detailed parts, the strokes are interwoven and overlapping so that they can make a mysterious impression. In part, those strokes, connected with all the delicate yet varied colors, can put an abstract effect in place.

　　Since the 1990s, I have laid more emphasis on brushstroke techniques with a view to reinforce the expressiveness of oil painting in the three main ways as follows: First, the pencraft feature of the brushstroke, i.e. the feature displayed in Chinese calligraphy, of which artistic conception and rhythms are the life; second, the variety of the brushstroke, such as light stroke, scratching stroke and dot stroke, which can express the changes of brush-using skills and the beauty of pencraft language; third, the mysterious sense of the brushstroke—a meaningful and tasteful visual effect which can be achieved via the interwoven and overlapping strokes. Any painting, if it presents its in-depth meaning directly and leaves people no space for thought, will be dull and less moving.

　　Huang Binhong has indeed created the crest of Chinese landscape painting that has exerted an extremely tremendous influence upon my oil painting. As a result of a harmonious combination of concretization in general and abstraction in part, his landscape painting is everything—majestic, vigorous and powerful—in a distance, yet nothing by a closer look. His ink strokes seem relaxed and all free at his will, unintentional but full of arcane truth, breaking completely through the strong stereotype of Chinese landscape. It is his substantial achievements in the art of painting that have driven me to leap from my earlier realistic style to the current liberal style.

　　Huang’s ink stroke on the paper is of layer upon layer, obvious yet obscure, thus mysterious and unpredictable. And the sense of its depth and its thickness is incomparably strong and profound. It needs such masterly skills that almost no one in the world is able to duplicate it. All these have guided me to present my similar pursuit in part of my oil painting. Huang’s ink gradation is deep yet not stiff, which shows the same truth in oil painting that transparency and flexibility are required to present dark colors.

　　Many Chinese painters have tried the nationalization of oil painting, but why is it so difficult for them to achieve anything, even if it is just to find a way out? Because they fail to realize that it doesn’t make any sense to completely merge the two types of paintings, which are totally different in both their forms and their spirit, just by superficially put them together. I fully recognize that the mergence of the western painting and the eastern painting requires a thorough knowledge and a profound understanding of their spirit as well as their forms. For a Chinese painter, for example, his unique living environment, his growing experience, his traditional consciousness, Chinese poetry and folk arts, etc., all serve to cultivate his soul, shaping his innermost mentality. On the other hand, traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy act as rich language expressions for cultural connotation.

　　The quintessence of Chinese national culture can be presented and the original taste of western oil paintings can remain by appropriate subject and site scene to express the feeling of a Chinese with the internal integration of the marrow of Chinese painting—the taste of brush and ink—and western oil painting after a painter develops a thorough understanding of the expressive form and language of oil painting. Europeans regard it as pure oil painting, whilst the Chinese can recognize the trace of the national quintessence from it. But it is, for sure, not the only way to blend western oil painting and traditional Chinese painting.

　　All in all, although my experience on this way is from unconsciousness to consciousness and from passiveness to activeness, I am certainly not able to have scored such achievements in this regard without my good command of the two languages of painting and my internal cultivation of the culture and sentiments as a Chinese. And I also think that the success on this way is decided more by my inner spirit and aesthetic orientation than by my exploration of the expressive form, since the former is really the root of all forms of language and the soil to breed them.

Written probably in the late 1990s or the beginning of 21st century