The Landscape in His Mind

By Ji Shaofeng,curator of Hubei Museum of Art

Ding Zhujun’s landscape paintings embrace a scene of poetic boundlessness and distant expanse.Those who are familiar with his artistic creations know that he is dedicated to the integration of the Chinese and Western styles of painting—attempting to instill the artistic charm of modernity into the traditional brush strokes and patterns of the Chinese style.Hence,his landscape paintings are not only a combination of the concrete and abstract,but also a blending of vivid imagery and artistic connotations,both rich and full,with magnificence and passion running through his artistic creations in the realm of landscape painting.

Ding Zhujun’s landscape paintings merge the transformation of artistic connotations and the seasonal changes of time and space,successfully conveying the aesthetic quest of the contemporary generation with a strong personal style.

His landscape paintings rarely mirror any one artistic school or influential master,and they are not confined to any artistic style.His work instead embarks on a path of his own by integrating traditional Chinese painting techniques with modern Western styles,especially in abstract painting.Centering on his personal experience and reflection of natural world,his paintings dwell on his individual sense of life.It is this strong reflection of individual spirit that pushes him to detach himself from the visible landscape,and to give priority to the ideographic expression of the mountains and rivers within his heart.

Because of his artistic transformation from formoriented to content-centered—or from the outside nature to the inner nature—his landscape paintings have an indescribable passion and flavor,representing a kind of free character and flexible depiction.His paintings focus on natural landscapes:spattering the majesty and grandeur of the natural mountains and rivers ontothe paper.He portrays an infinite spiritual world on finite paper.He paints the vicissitudes of history.He depicts the great changes of society and the joys and sorrows of the human world.He does this all through his paintings of grass,trees,mountains,and rivers.

The Awakening Green《滄桑醒綠》

His lively and picturesque landscapes are well-defined in different shades of ink with indulgent feelings and deeper meanings.He uses generalization,refinement,and abstraction to vividly convey the “deep and wide,unrestrained and unbending” posture of great rivers and mountains.The seeming restriction on form and concrete objects along with the intentional use of modern composition reframes the relationship between man and nature.Every work embeds humanity’s inner nature into the natural landscape,and into the natural appearance and the inner composition of the mountains and rivers.He is particularly good at describing the natural world through his deliberate arrangement of texture and space.He employs techniques such as random spraying of large areas with ink patches and lines on the paintings,thus producing a marvelous and melodic effect.He is devoted to depicting the landscapes in his mind rather than those in natural scenery,setting free his passion for life.His paintings are the manifesto of his attitude to life,his spiritual pleasure,as well as his free mind.