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Ramblings on the Side of the "Road"

2016-07-15 13:29:21来源:作者:Laojia

I have been told, "Mr. Jia, your work is abstract painting."
In October 1988 when I did a solo exhibition at the National Art Museum of China, the viewers' reactions were even more varied. Some said I was an impressionist, some said I was a modernist; some said my paintings were carelessly dribbled, some said that they were "true xieyi". Others said that my paintings were modern consciousness mixed with Chinese brush and ink.
The viewer is fair. Departing from different perspectives and arriving at differing yet similar conclusions, the sum of their conclusions is my true self. The road I have travelled is the unwavering, unflinching "doctrine of the mean". The avant-garde looks down upon my work as nothing more than mixing and matching; the traditionalists revile it as nothing more than playing around with styles.
 I believe, however, that the "doctrine of the mean" is truly inclusive. Anything that is good can be made into "one's own"; there are no "names", there are no "friends and foes". Walking along this road, all things are the sum of various odds and ends, arriving at "sudden enlightenment".
I started my exploration in the 1970s. Spilled ink and splashed color, large-scale xieyi, small-scale xieyi, line-less form, line painting, red horses, green horses...I am like a starving lion, searching high and low. Sometimes I am excited, and sometimes I am disappointed, hesitant, confused: where should I go, what road should I take?
If one can know oneself and know others, then no challenges are difficult. But people do not often know themselves.
After ten years of exploration, searching for myself, understanding myself, establishing myself and following myself, I have reached the following conclusion:
Interest is the inexhaustible driving force behind one's career. Interest can be viewed as a synonym for genius. In addition to one's nature, one's interests and personality are shaped for life by childhood experiences. In other words, the individual inclinations of an artist are set during childhood.
I was born in a mountain village. I have put cows out to pasture, raised horses, and cut firewood; I have run from bandits, have caught birds in trees, and caught fish in rivers; I have taken part in class struggle, and survived on wild weeds and husks...I went through it all in my childhood.
I love roughness and the wild; I love boundless grasslands, and running herds of cattle. My affection for mountain flowers, streams, jumping colts and fighting bulls is ineffable. Many of these things were my childhood playmates; they have become an endless source of inspiration for my painting, the uniting theme in my work.
Finding myself was like finding the origin of a great river. The context became clear, and the next question was how to swim in this great river. Departing from the "doctrine of the mean", I approached an extreme. I planted myself in between the "imagistic" and the "abstract". I have painted figurative and abstract works, but the majority of my work is "imagistic".
Imagistic and abstract painting are the same, they are both paintings from the heart, able to willfully gallop without limits, without end. However, this type of painting retains form at its core. Form is thus envisioned as a symbolic device, incarnating the sum of the painter's thought and emotion, necessarily possessing individual uniqueness. This is the difference with others' style.
Large brushstrokes and large splashes of ink, ink within and rhythm without, simplicity of image—these are the visual hallmarks of my work. I focus on my ideas, feelings, anger, joy, humor...I make them stronger.
Painting cows is an exertion of force; I emphasize the beauty of the masculine.
Force is a decisive element of Chinese painting (it is in fact the basis of the universe and the ten thousand things). Force is life's manifestation.
Force and qi are at once one and the same and opposed. Qi's flow and permeability form tone, all while being manifested through the brush's force. There is also healthy qi and pernicious qi. Force is similarly divided into inner force and brute force. This transformation from the internal to the external requires a long period of practice and cultural cultivation in order to appreciate its essence. It is only after practice that such a transformation be revealed on paper.
Being "imagistic", a painting's simplicity is its important characteristic. When I paint, I pass from the complicated to the simple, removing all superfluity over and over again— this is why we often say Chinese painters must paint "three thousand scraps of paper".
Regardless of being abstract or imagistic, my painting is always derived from my life and experience. I don't have the capacity to make fabricate images out of thin air.
I love majestic expansiveness. I seek inspiration in the grasslands and plateaus. In order to express different emotions, I offer up an ink painting to the world, but yet, I am merely an infinitesimally small human. I do not divide painting into the traditional categories of figure painting, landscape, and birds and flowers; I immediately seize whatever moves me. In my painting, emotion is greater than artful form; plainness is greater than ornamentation. However, I have not yet attained the high level of spontaneous creation. I usually need a long period of trial and reflection to make a painting, although I try by all means possible to preserve my "first impression".