４０－Ｙｅａｒ Ｄｅｄｉｃａｔｉｏｎ ｔｏ Ｌａｎｄｓｃａｐｅ Ｐａｉｎｔｉｎｇ

President Yang Zongxin mentioned to us that his friend professor Sun Chunsheng is a prominent landscape painter in Shanghai. Yang and Su have been friends for years. The other day we met with Professor Su Chunsheng in Hangzhou. Modest and graceful， the professor said， “I came to attend the 80th anniversary celebrations of the China Academy of Art. I may not deserve the title of master. I have spent the last 40 some years exploring the beauty of landscape painting and scoring some achievements.”

Su hails from Cangnan， a satellite city near Wenzhou in southern Zhejiang. He studied under masters such as Pan Tianshou， Lu Yanshao and Fang Zengxian， at the traditional Chinese painting department of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts， the predecessor of the present-day China Academy of Art. Now retired， he used to teach at East China Normal University. During his career as a professor and artist， he assumed many positions and granted some honorary titles. In 1997， he was awarded a prize for his lifetime achievement by the International Biographical Center of Cambridge. The Central Radio and Television University made a documentary on his paintings of Mount Huang.

While working at the East China Normal University， professor Su visited the mount once a year. He did it for more than 30 years. No wonder his paintings depict the mount so vividly and masterfully. He has exhibited his graphic illustrations of Mount Huang at home and abroad and his vibrant depictions deliver an overwhelming glamour and might.

Professor Su has explored aesthetic vocabulary and exceptional expressions of traditional Chinese landscape painting. He says there are three important aspects to strive to perfect if one is to do well in landscape painting. First， one needs to master ink technique and brushwork. Brush and ink technique is the basis of landscape painting. One needs to practice and explore over a long time before one can have one’s own way in doing landscapes. There is no shortcut for the mastery. Second， one needs to make one’s own judgment. Aesthetic pursuit requires thinking artistically at a very sophisticated level. Whether one can make progress in traditional Chinese painting of landscape depends on the quality of one’s aesthetic studies. Third， one needs to inject elegance and inspiring connotations into creations. Artistic conception is the most difficult expression in landscape painting. One can’t afford to duplicate natural scenes photographically or mechanically. One needs to use artistic ways to depict the essence and beauty of nature so that audiences can be inspired by profound connotations. Some ancient masters created a simple style to express the grandeur and majesty of nature， setting an example for us to understand art and nature.