Preface

        Climaxes of development and variety of schools have emerged during almost a thousand years of history of the long-standing and glorious Chinese landscape painting. The Chinese landscape painting had been prosperously developing from the Wei and Jin Dynasties to the Tang Dynasty. There were Wu Daozi who painted the landscape of the Jialing River in one day in the “sparse style”, Li Sixun who added the colour of gold into his landscape paintings, and Zhang Zao and Wang Wei who applied the skills of washing painting to painting the beauty of the landscape. And even more masters of Chinese landscape paintings came forth in the Five Dynasties and the Song Dynasty--Jing, Guan, Dong, Ju, Liu, Li, Ma, Xia and so on. And when it came to the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, landscape painting became the mainstream of the painting world; the four masters in the Yuan Dynasty, the four masters in the Ming Dynasty, the four monks, the four Wangs and the eight masters of Jinling were the representative painters. It can be said that since the Yuan Dynasty, China's history of painting had been led by Chinese landscape painting. And there still have been masters like Huang Binhong and Li Keran known to the world in the modern times.

        Having reached its peaks so many times for so long, is there any more space for further development left for today's landscape painters? Yes, there is, but it is difficult. They may seek inspiration and innovations from the traditional style to create something new, or they may absorb the ways of expression in modern Western art to change the original look of the Chinese landscape painting, or they may put the landscape and people's life together in one painting in order to get close to real life. They may either be infatuated with lines or get fascinated by structures. And out of the numerous possibilities, Liu Dezhou chooses to recreate the beauty of the structures of the landscape with thick lines.

        Though the usual painting skill of landscape serves the traditional aesthetic standard well, it is still seen as the stereotype of landscape painting. Liu can not find his own artistic individuality and value of existence through painting such kind of work. However, when he boldly applies thick lines to painting the landscape, he discovers that it is the best way and perfect condition to establish his own style. He then all at once gets rid of all the stereotypes and forms his own distinctive understanding of Chinese landscape painting. It does not matter if he restores the original appearance of the landscape. His unique understanding enables him to present the beauty of the structure of the landscape and his delicate skill of painting. Though he abandons the techniques of brush texturing as the traditional way of painting the landscape, he does not give up on the original spirit of expressing his aesthetic ideal and feelings as a painter by landscape painting.

        The vigour of the brush stroke and the dimensional structure of the composition are the two significant characteristics of Liu Dezhou's works. This kind of vigorous brush stroke does not commonly apply in calligraphy or painting. And when the lines are seemingly too thickened to fit the scale of the paper, this kind of vigorous brush stroke presents itself with idiosyncratic effect. The neat and powerful painting style can also be seen in Zhou Shaohua and Jia Haoyi's works. However, Zhou tends to make his writing brush lean a little at the end of a stroke, and Jia prefers to piece large parts of the landscape together in his paintings. And in most of his painting, Liu puts the strength in the centre of every brush stroke. Therefore, Liu Dezhou's simplistic style of landscape painting is basically based on lines. The dimensional structure of composition means that the painting parts are distinguished and separated by lines, which shows some touch of structuralism. This characteristic gives Liu's paintings the manner of abstraction to some extent.

        Paint the landscape, but not necessarily portray it exactly the way it is. The idea may offer Liu new inspiration to create an original type of painting.

Jia Fangzhou