2014-03-06
Article by Yi Jingshen
Abstract: The integration of Chinese and Western painting styles is not easy. One stresses on the plane of lines, the other on the three-dimensional sense of light and shade. He Jiaying is fairly skillful on such integration.
Heart Talk
Zhang Xiong Art correspondence As leafing through He Jiaying’s artwork collection in my naïve childhood, I was simply amazed at the beauty of in his figure painting “What beautiful colors! Why the girl’s eyes look up? Her dress is so pretty…” At that time, I still could not understand the profoundness behind it. Beauty is simply beauty, without too many reasons. I simply like the light color and those girls’ slightly upturned eyes. I really miss such naïve feelings on art. Now I have lost my own feelings after listening to many others. But my growing aesthetic ability enables me to gradually understand He’s aesthetic ideology expressed through his works.
The essence of Chinese fine brushwork lies in lines. He Jiaying is perfectly skillful at the use of such unique painting language. To take a close and careful look at the starting and ending of every stroke, from hair root to hair end, from eyes corners to lips, from fingers to clothes wrinkles, you can feel a rhythm, just like a mountain spring is streaming into river.
The rhythm of lines
The essence of Chinese fine brushwork lies in lines. He Jiaying is perfectly skillful at the use of such unique painting language. To take a close and careful look at the starting and ending of every stroke, from hair root to hair end, from eyes corners to lips, from fingers to clothes wrinkles, you can feel a rhythm, just like a mountain spring is streaming into river.
The colors in He Jiaying’s paintings are quite beautiful. They are so impressive that I have been desiring to wear the beautiful dresses in his paintings since childhood. He loves painting girls in long dress. The girls, with light skin, in light-colored dress, with half-drunk eyes, are much like the fallen blossoms in the autumn. His Sour Grape represents my best fantasy for women. The green grape leaves and the white grape trellis form a strong aesthetic sense of color tones. The figures are only embellishments. They stay quietly in the picture, whispering, or reading or playing the flute. But all their movements do not affect the quietness of the whole picture. The colors of the girls’ dresses are not eye-popping but gently integrate with the grape vines.
Sour Grape
Integration of Chinese and Western painting styles
In the integration with Western painting styles, He Jiaying keeps the classical taste and expression technique of Chinese fine brushwork and presents western style in structure and emotion design, restrained but not shy, quiet but not rigid.
Dark Autumn
Distance creates beauty.
He knows how to control the distance between the art and the audience very well. His Dark Autumn is a very good representative in this respect. The subject of the painting is the dark blue background and a thinking girl sitting on the ground; the sparse branches and leaves are like the girl’s thoughts; while the girl has no facial expression, leaving much room for imagination. The audience cannot help falling into thinking together with the girl. Thus, the audience fall into the “trap” designed by the painter. This is the very perfect distance between the art and the audience.
To feel the classical, rhythmic and formal beauty of He Jiaying’s artwork, we need to read them carefully.