HAPPY 2023 NEW YEAR’S DAY!

Happy 2023 New Year’s Day! 元旦快乐！元旦 is the Chinese word for the first day of new year, the mark of a new beginning. To celebrate, let’s take a look at a traditional Chinese painter who devised a novel approach to Chinese landscape painting.

金霞 (Golden Twilight), Jia Youfu, ink and colour on paper

贾又福, Jia Youfu is a contemporary artist known for his sublime landscape paintings, where his mountains and clouds are infused with human emotions and an unparalleled sense of power. He is trained in traditional Chinese ink painting techniques, yet combines them with the novel field of abstraction, creating a cyclical connection between the past and the present art world.

诗之韵 (Poetic Melody), Jia Youfu, ink and colour on paper

Most of his landscape paintings consist of large washes of black ink, sometimes diluted to a grey.

山野暮雪（Wild Mountain with Snow at Night), Jia Youfu, ink and colour on paper

Sometimes, his monotone paintings are adorned with washes of orange or gold. The colours, although muted, still shine upon the black and grey. The interplay of ink and paint creates a rhythm for the landscape, like a heartbeat of nature.

牧趣图 (Painting the Joy of Herding), Jia Youfu, ink and colour on paper

The limited palette evokes the simplicity and balance vital to Chinese ink painting yet is a result of careful manipulation and experimentation to characterize nature’s unparalleled vitality.

归牧图 (Painting of Returning from Herding), ink and colour on paper

In many of Youfu’s 归牧图, Return from Herding paintings, the herder and his cows are reduced to specks in contrast to the flowing billows of clouds and waves of mountains. The size of Youfu’s brushstrokes further emphasizes the landscape’s greatness against the small and unimportant creatures in the corner.

归牧图 (Painting of Returning from Herding), ink and colour on paper

Each brushstroke, once made, leaves a watermark on the rice paper. By layering these watermarks continuously, Youfu creates an illusion of movement, as if nature is an alive, powerful being. In different paintings, the directions of his brush and ink portray distinct atmospheres, sometimes calm, like Yamamoto’s flow (see my previous blog),

Two Bulls in Landscape, Jia Youfu, ink and colour on paper

other times chaotic, pointing to human’s lack of control over the course of nature.

山海之盟（Between Mountain and Sea), Jia Youfu, ink on paper

In infusing human emotions and thoughts into his landscape, Youfu provokes a new perspective regarding not just the practice of Chinese ink landscape paintings but also the relationship between humans and nature. His art has a reverence for nature. Humans are only a small part of nature, yet they are one with it.

云开（When the Clouds Open to the Sun), Jia Youfu, ink and colour on paper

Youfu’s ink paintings elicit similar sentiments to that of English Romantic artist Joseph Mallord William Turner’s oil seascape paintings. His manipulation of expressive colours and turbulent brushstrokes evoke a sense of “the sublime”, an experience of incomparable awe, wonder, and passion regarding the power of nature. In looking at Jia Youfu’s romanticized mountainous landscape paintings, the viewer is overpowered by their insignificance in face of the greater world, in utter awe at the grandness of nature.

秋光如金 (Autumn Light Like Gold), Jia Youfu, ink and paint on paper

Sunrise, Joseph Mallord William Turner, oil on canvas

Youfu’s paintings remind the contemporary world to cease, even just for a second, and observe the clouds and water, to breathe in the flow of life and indulge in this infinite, timeless beauty.

多福多寿 (Much Fulfillment and Longevity), Jia Youfu, ink and colour on paper

This is a painting from Youfu, quite different from his other artworks. He titled it "with fish and fruit, much fulfilment and longevity", a fitting phrase for the coming year. With this, wishing everyone a very Happy New Year! Chinese Lunar New Year is quickly approaching on the 22nd, when we will celebrate the Year of the Rabbit together by looking at some Chinese ink bunny paintings!