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Life Force in Wild Flowers
By Jia Fangzhou

Flowers-and-birds painting, among all the traditional paintings, had been a mature subject long time ago. The reason why it gained adequate development in early stage was that, similar with the landscape painting, it expressed the unity of human beings and the nature, and that was in accordance with literati’s aesthetic ideal. But the difference is that the landscape painting depicts the nature in a panoramic way, thus is a macrographic reflection towards nature, whiles the flowers-and-birds painting is the observation towarrds part of that, or is the feature focusing on flowers and birds, thus is microcosmic, and indicating the compatibility between man and nature as well as man’s yearning towards nature. Mountains, rivers, flowers and birds all are the components of nature. As the singers of nature, the painters on landscapes and flowers-and-birds are the same in terms of eulogizing the nature.

Yang Ruifen took the same road as others at the beginning. Her works themed on flowers and birds won her many awards. However, as she kept sketching from nature and looking for new topics, Yang gradually found her point of interest, and discovered the technique of her own. This point of interest came from the “consciousness of life”. No longer simply taking flowers as the beautiful subject to copy as she did before, she began to look at them as sign and matrix of life. All symptoms of new life came from their beautiful appearances, so that they themselves are life entities. It is painter’s unique angle and deep understanding of flowers makes the unique expression.

I saw a documentary two years ago which was titled as The Private Life of Plants. It represented the plants from a totally different angle and shot them as they were total animals. It documented their germination, rooting, blossom, bearing fruit, as well as all the wise strategies they took in order to survive, to mutiply and avoid extinction. It was really stunning. Plants are essentially natural life, what makes them different is that their life process takes place at solely one spot where they grow up. So people separate them with animals. But in Yang Ruifen’s works, I could see exactly the same angle which is completely new towards life as the documentary.

It is the most fascinating phenomena for the individual life to bud and bloom. They go all-out to attract bees and butterflies for pollination by their vivid colors, exquisite texture, pretty pattern and inviting fragrance. And all these are for the purpose to multiply family. But while in doing so, they also become pleasing scenery and the enduring subject under painters’ brushes.

It is not difficult to notice that most of the flowers that she paints are not known, as they are not precious species cultivated from the greenhouse, but unusual flowers from the wild. The artist gains materials at various palces through painting from nature, and continues to create on that basis. She is sensitive towards different shapes and composition, to the lively character of pistil and steman. She uses exaggeration and distortion to their forms and reorganizes certain elements to change the original structure. Furthermore, she even invents a kind of flower according to her own imagination. But the purpose is not in inventing itself, but to mobilize and personate those static flowers, and to present them as lightly dancers, or flying butterflies, or sometimes jellyfish floating in the sea, or birds that streching their wings and flying forward. At this moment, flowers are not flowers. Then what are they? Are they human beings, butterflies or birds? When look carefully again, they are still flowers, but personated flowers with figure, movement and sense of life. Therefore, this creative and poetic depiction on the vitality of nature and life has become the most important characteristic of Yang Ruifen’s works.

This adventruous personated depiction on flowers newly tried by Yang Ruifen is unprecedent. She discovers the close interrelation with nature through lively flowers, and tries to animate and mobilize them by strenthening or altering the form and structure of flowers. This new thought and new technique of expression just let her avoid the inveteracy usually seen in general flowers-and-birds paintings. Some painters on this do not seek their favourite subjects through the inspiration from life, but always favor to copy the ready fruit of predecessors which is to express flowers as the symbol of men’s integrity. For example, the plum blossom, orchid, bamboo and chrysanthemum normally painted by predecessors are representation of the virtuousness of man of honour; the lotus represents the righteousness, peony the richness, crane the longevity and so on. But the followers do not have practical observation and personal experience, so they only stay in the same old groove. Yang Ruifen’s artworks on flowers obviously have nothing to do with this kind of cliché. This is really worth approving.

In her artistic treatment, Yang Ruifen also has her own feature. She attaches same values to colors and ink, meticulous style and liberal style. Qi Baishi had used this technique before. He drew insects with meticulous style while weeds in liberal style. Yang Ruifen draws flowers in meticulous style, but at the same time uses the technique of wash and ink painting. She enjoys using both meticulous style and liberal style, thus to form a strong contrast between roughness and refinedness. In the meanwhile, the splashing of ink also increases the atmosphere of the wild and life energy, and this constitutes another characteristic of her artworks.



Meticulous Liberal Style of Yang Ruifen
Jia Haoyi

Yang Ruifen, the famous meticulous flowers-and-birds painter, is my colleague at the Beijing Fine Art Academy. Her works could be recognized at first glance in an exhibition by whoever is familiar with her. Her most obvious characteristic is the meticulous liberal style! She doesn’t follow the way strictly of the traditional meticulous painting, although she learned that tradition in early stages. She left that formula comparatively earlier, and while studied tradition, she also started the exploration and construction of new manners. She is a meticulous painter with strong personal characteristics, and yet the traditional formula in meticulous painting is more deep-rooted than other kinds since time immemorial. Thus exploration and innovation are something that many meticulous painters dare not touch.

First of all, she gets rid of the traditional composition format in Chinese flowers-and-birds paintings. Instead of the vertical composition, she adopts horizontal and square composition and uses a lot of features. In the 1980s, her paintings began to display strong characteristics, or we could say she was already on the road of liberal style. She subverted the traditional Chinese meticulous paintings by not stressing on the real portrait of objects, but by intensely exaggerating one part of it. That’s why it could strike audience’s vision and thoughts. She sometimes only chooses one point from flowers, and then puts all her efforts on this point by seizing the essence, and all the rest is just supporting. To attain this purpose, she deconstructs the whole picture and image, and then creates a combination or new composition. She abandons the truth that the nature has provided, but makes it a picture of imagery, and creates the truth of imagery. Therefore, I reckon that is the meticulous liberal style.

Not only does she adopt liberal style in paintings’ composition, but also in use of the colors. She doesn’t follow tradition in the method of coloring and the choice of colors. She looks for new language for colors and the new methods to relaize that, thus creating a brand new set of colors and mode. The colors are strong, steady and rich, showing no monotony in subtle and contracted areas, nor affectation in its ever-changing varieties.

Yang Ruifen has been conducting the experiment of meticulous painting for several decades. She created batches of remarkable flowers-and-birds paintings, and her passionate creation now still continues.



Beautiful and Yet Pristine
Shao Dazhen (1993)

Ms. Yang Ruifen is the famous flowers-and-birds painter who’s active in the mainland painting circles in recent years. Her paintings have fresh aura and elegant style, which have reviewed favorably by both experts and audience. I have been paying attention to Yang Ruifen’s paintings for quite a few years. I always stood in front of her works at several exhibitions and was attracted by her unique conception and techniques.

The worst danger for painting is the unimaginative craftsmanship, especially in painting with exact delineation and enriched colours. Although such painting presents objects with delicate and refined technique, it doesn’t require attention to all sides of it, and it rejects feelingless depiction even more. The representations that lack of implication could be too shallow for audience’s aftertaste, and yet paintings that lack of the involvement of emotion could bore the audience and can’t arouse the interest of appreciation. Of course, in order to achieve being refined but not vulgar, delicate but not trivial, the author needs to have not only the mature technique, but also artistic culture and savvy. In order to be original, Yang Ruifen makes every effort to beak through the traditional formulas, from artistic conception to painting techniques. She doesn’t pursue the completeness in composition, but the feeling of being natural and liberal, as well as the peculiarity and freshness. She consciously puts in irregular elements into the regular and liberal style into meticulous style, so that to reach the artistic effect of peculiarity, freshness and elegance. I think besides technique and skill, Yang Ruifen’s achievement is also related with her new art concept.

Painting relies on technique; however, technique is not the decisive element. Painting is the representation of internal life-force and emotions. Yang Ruifen is well aware of this. She said, “Artistic creation directly reflects the painter’s thoughts, emotions as well as the change of times.” She is not satisfied with pure portray of natural scenery and objects. She always pays attention to construct the artistic world through her own eyes. It is easy to discern the strong feelings of the painter through the pieces of wonderful, beautiful and pristine paintings.

There is division between Chinese and Western paintings, and the various categories of paintings have their own characteristics. But these differences and characteristics are not unchangeable taboos. Even though there are different systems in Chinese and Western paintings, they are not absolutely opposing. They could be mutual complementation and be mutual beneficial. Our predecessors have attained tidemark of the traditional painting with exact delineation and enriched colors. If people of nowadays wish to have a break through, on the one hand, he or she must have a thorough study of the objects, and embodies the mood of the era, infuses the artworks with deep and natural feelings, avoid the road of imitation, thus be different from others and predecessors. On the other hand, he or she should be good at absorbing nutrition from other ethnic paintings, including the liberal style paintings, so to make up the lack of technique of traditional paintings with exact delineation and enriched colors.

Yang Ruifen’s renovation is based on the study of traditional and foreign arts. She loved art as a child, and followed famous flowers-and-birds painter Mr. Tian Shiguang to learn drawing. She dug into the works of Song and Yuan dynasties as well as famous artists such as Chen Laolian, Wu Changshuo, Ren Bonian, Chen Zhifo, Zheng Naiguang and so on. She was enlightened by western and Japanese paintings, and absorbs the consciousness for design and elements of composition. She also pays attention to the achievement of decorative drawings and photo art. The nourishment from various aspects apparently has raised the level of her paintings. In recent years, she attaches more attention to the combination of meticulous depiction and liberal style wash and ink painting. She endows the paintings with decorative flavor, rich expression and even wider imagery.

Yang Ruifen is good at capturing the fleeting opportunity and chance during her creation, and then she amplifies and develops them according to her own perception over life. Some of her paintings are the results of thought-out plans, some are improvisation, and some are the combination of both. It is her life and emotional experience and also rich imagination that arouse people’s feeling of vitality in her paintings. The unconventional Yang Ruifen is still on her way of exploration and creation. I believe that this painter, who’s just over 40, would achieve more through ceaseless practice.



The Imesis of flowers in Symbolic Reality
Li Ru

The Chinese meticulous flowers-and-birds painting had always advocated precision and realistic presentation from Tang Dynasty to Yuan Dynasty. Since Ming and Qing Dynasties, Chen Laolian started to emphasize the generalization and deformation of the imagery, and Yuan Nantian initiated the boneless method in meticulous flowers-and-birds painting, thus approaching the liberal style. Painters desired more to change in modern times. Yu Feian’s lining flowers-and-birds paintings with rich colors absorbed the decoration style on the basis of the Court Style of Song Dynasty, and changed the effeminacy by enhancing the momentum of meticulous paintings. Chen Zhifo began to render the background in order to create uniform colors and imagery. For the need of the composition, Zheng Naiguang chose part of flowers to go together with bronze wares, and the meticulous flowers-and-birds paintings began to develop towards the expression of forms. In the past thirty years, Yang Ruifen’s liberal meticulous flowers-and-birds paintings are outstanding in terms of the concept innovation and form creation. The famous artist Mr. Jia Haoyi addressed Yang Ruifen’s style as the meticulous liberal style, and I think this liberal style is mainly represented on three aspects.

Firstly the liberal style is embodied in the shapes.

Yang Ruifen initiates the deformation of personification and imitation. She transforms flowers into persons, animals and imaginative objects and endows flowers with various shapes of objects and postures of figures, and breaks the definition of flowers in the traditional concept, and thus improving the realm of mental image. Before her, there was imagery deformation of meticulous flowers-and-birds paintings, but there was not a break through from the restriction of structure, and the technique is still at the stage of composition design. In this term, Yang Ruifen’s deformation is innovative. She digs and creates beauty through study of flowers’ shapes. The exaggeration, decoration, pattern, deconstruction and double images are all at the service for creating brand-new images. And finally the imaginative illusion of flowers is displayed to the world with an affirmative and elegant form. The meticulous paintings used to create images through refined drawing, while the liberal painting makes images alive by general depiction. It is difficult and rare that Yang Ruiren could express the liberal atmosphere through meticulous style of her own, and got a foot in the evolution history of Chinese paintings.

The liberal style secondly is embodied in the technique.

The tradition meticulous painting is painted on the Shu Xuan paper on which ink doesn’t spread nor sink. But Yang Ruifen uses Sheng Xuan paper on which ink spreads and sinks, and she explores her own technique through practice. The most creative and unique characteristic is that she introduces Pomo which is splashing ink technique into the meticulous flowers-and-birds painting. She also uses ink at the background and uese crumpled paper. She combines the liberal and meticulous forms in a clever way. This spectacular wonderful state relies on the comprehensive grasp of the liberal taste and also the further pursuit of texture through refined depiction. However, there was never this kind of mettle in the circle of flowers-and-birds paintings before Yang Ruifen. Pomo composes great contrast in the meticulous painting. It breaks the stable composition and bursts out intense force. But people would take this as an intentional sought of peculiarity through risk. But out of people’s expectation, there’s a kind of beauty in the even more subtle balance that only resets after breaking the original one. It is from Yang Ruifen’s such kind of works could we detect her talent that travels among the various traditional and modern techniques.

The liberal style thirdly is embodied in the free style of colors.

As the world’s cultures melt into each other and develop, colors, as the element of visual language, have provided artists broader room for expression. Chinese painting had exhibited the importance that it attached to the function of colors at instances as Qi Baishi’s contrast of red and black, Lin Fengmian’s colored ink and Huang Yongyu’s colored lotus flowers. The uniqueness of Yang Ruifen’s colors lies in her intentional and vigorous use of colors. These colors are not confined to intrinsic colors, environmental colors, impression of colors, subjective colors, and imaginative colors. The colors are also used flexibly, creatively and broadly, thus increase the interest of liberal style. In her paintings, there’s always unexpected collocation of colors that may not necessarily match the reality. Seen as a whole, different colors display harmonious beauty that answer to each other, and reach the truth of intention. Sometimes, her exaggeration of intrinsic colors and environmental colors form the natural colors from people’s impression. The flexible use of colors that not confined to one single mode is based on the intuition and endowment of the artist, and this constitutes the varieties of her works.

Yang Ruifen’s paintings give people an overall impression of liberal spirit; people could feel the generosity through shapes, the spontaneity through technique, and wisdom through colors. So as the Buddha’s words go, one flower is a world. Yang Ruifen’s flowers and birds constitute a wide and free world.

Once an American friend said that, America had Georgia Totto O’Keeffe, while China had Yang Ruifen. They are both outstanding female artists with strong personalities. The microscopic flowers of O’Keeffe feature the tiny parts of flowers and expose the beauty of curves in the outline of plants. Yang Ruifen processes the flowers’ shapes into imaginative variants, and is eager to create beautiful forms; however, the feature is only one of the techniques. What they have in common is that their creation is half meticulous and half abstract. In O’Keeffe’s paintings, I see the meticulous subjectivity, which is the subjective angle in objective scenery. In Yang Ruifen’s paintings, I see symbolic reality, which is the realistic scenery built by symbolization. This reality is not the real objective image, but it corresponds with the essence of Chinese art in the resemblance of spirit and it is the real resurgence of the soul’s scenery.

Yang Ruifen’s meticulous flowers-and-birds paintings are rooted in native land and set its style in times, and her innovations have become the indispensable link in the development of history. The new form that initiated by her will surely bring influence that can’t be ignored in the future for meticulous flowers-and-birds painting.

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