Occasional Thoughts of Painting

Painting is the most independent work in the world. All your heart and soul, and even every nerve of you, are immersed into it. You feel you are enchanted by the charm of art and it sparkles your passion forever.

Since I began to love painting, I always pay most attention to my interests, hobbies, and feelings. I am driven by my mind. The deep passion makes me dedicated to my hobbies. I cherish my feelings very much and that keeps me working till now. Maybe because of my characters, experience and knowledge structure, I am especially fond of the ambitious and healthy art of the Renaissance which has infused into my blood.

The 1989 journey to Europe and America made me love art more than ever: rigorous, truthful, and idealistic. It seemed that I learned the essence of art from the journey and the great art works there gave me endless motives. My heart became filled with confidence in the vigor and creation of space hidden in visual paintings.

Any great art in history is everlasting. Too much care for ingenuous invention, sensational social and audience's response, and swinging with the changing trends, or paying too much for the so-called spirit of time, modern taste, new concept and the like, I think, are on the contrary to the law of art. An artist must express his own true feelings. Good artistic work should flow from the bottom of his heart just like sweet and clean spring from the mountains. There are plenty of people who are cleverer than Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Miller, or Van Gogh, but only they can produce art with personal, spiritual power and emotional depth.

The world changes as time passes. However the surface of substance changes, the desire for beauty in human heart never changes. That is what classical art cares most-the eternal essence.

The maxim of my life is to simplify everything that I can and put all efforts, feelings, thinking, and knowledge into my love. I should exert myself in this life on what I can grasp and excel. When I grasp something, I can use the same process to learn others. The worst result is Jack of all trades. A good fashion designer will have mutual language with a good artist. But a Jack of all trades shows only his arrogance and contradictions in logic.

Those works with good quality and noble spirits surely can be found to belong to masters. The differences between master and ordinary painters are not the differences in skills. Sometimes, the skills of ordinary painters may seem even better than those of masters, but when their works are put together, the works of masters are so rich, moving and imposing that you will not be fed up with appreciation.

A man with moderate and sensible mind and without too much care for personal and immediate interest is the most promising to succeed.

Written by Yang Feiyun in August 1998

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