Shaping of Ink

        Unique and unexpected thrilling! Liu Dezhou’s ink world is a highly purification of beauty and soul.
        His distinctive language of image and tremendous momentum of using pen and ink, bear aggressive visual power, penetrate into people’s heart and soul and are very enlightening. Through Liu Dezhou’s art vision, we are filled with magnanimous candor, upright power and firm courage while our thoughts could travel to infinity. Just as Mr. Yu Qiuyu’s saying,”Art is one kind of quality to prove one human. It’s a possibility for people to conduct beautiful communication among misunderstanding and irritation. It’s a repeating warning of human beings to avoid falling into superficial utility.” When reading Liu Dezhou’s paintings, we find the interest and happiness of sharing same insight and being connected spiritually. This is a high level enjoyment of recovering our original simplicity and abandoning secularity.
        Liu De’zhou’s splashed ink landscapes is the liberation of thinking logic. He arranges the composition of paintings through his simple and generous character, and always accomplishes painting at a stretch on inspiration through techniques of splashing, texture strokes, dropping and haboku.
        His spirit is like a riding warrior on glutinous rice paper, and each of his strokes is turning over a new leaf of his story. This state of creation breaks through the existed language, and naturally forms the unique art style of his own. He insisted on his image language during his many years’ art exploration. He visited nearly all the famous landscape of China, but was more attracted by some unknown and rural wild mountains. When he looked for angles that could easily be missed, and caught the natural rhythms of humble mountains and rocks, his found the source of inspiration.
        He loves to observe mountains in mornings and evenings during which time he could abandon minor details but concentrate on the overall structure, and then put the momentary image in ink showing perpetual light and shadow. With acute instinct for art, fearless exaggeration and deformation, he created vivid and yet condensed, powerful mountains and rocks, and this becomes the very unique symbol of his when he faces towards the world.
        Mr. Lu Chen once wrote in his ink painting view that “The most moving thing is the thing that has shape. So he whoever makes breakthrough in shaping in history will be outstanding.” But it is far more difficult to create one’s own language style on shaping than to gain techniques and skills of ink painting. This is just as Mr. Qi Gong said, “There is nothing more difficult than composition when painting.” Liu Dezhou’s personal faith in shaping will definitely leave unforgettable mark in history for his art works.
        Liu Dezhou’s works are also challenging. On the one hand, it’s the challenge against parochiality and solidified aesthetic appreciation. In his view, the process of art renovation is to guide audience to adjust to new aesthetic appreciation while providing them free imagination. He constantly decomposes and rebuilds black and white, and excavates a special angle of view, thus experiences new visual stimulation. On another hand, it’s the challenge against perfect balancing realized by subjective motive. He thinks that pure rationality and irrationality are both flimsy. There should be “reasonable” and also “unreasonable” in view which means that paradoxical, protuberant or cracked elements should be added into the painting, in that way bringing contradictory strength into it, thus forms the healthy and complete beauty. His aesthetic opinion speaks also the continuation of Chinese classic philosophy and Zen spirit on modern people.
        Liu Dezhou’s first teacher when he’s young is the son of Qi Baishi, Qi Liangyi. He lived in Yu’er Hutong of Nanluoguxiang which was the former site of the Beijing Fine Art Academy with many artists, like Wu Xiu, Zhang Renzhi, Wang Wenfang, Ma Quan, Zhou Sicong, Wei Jiangfan and so on. Liu Dezhou grew up in this environment of strong art atmosphere. He learned traditional techniques with Guan Songfang, Pu Songchuang in 1970s, and then was directed by Zhang Renzhi. He entered Beijing Fine Art Academy in 1977 to be the person responsible for the reference room. This provides him the opportunity to read famous artists’ works and learn the essence of predecessors’ artworks and this enables him to open horizon and lay firm foundation for his achievement of traditional art. China experienced dramatic renovation in 1980s, and at the same time Liu Dezhou’s artistic style and creation orientation were formed.
        His ink painting follows the ancient theme, innovative and yet against the vogue. We could detect the natural fusion of traditional ink aroma and techniques with modern abstract method and manifestation. To achieve this does not only rely on his brilliant force and skill, but more on his profound root in the folk culture, as well as the modern aesthetic appreciation with history continuation. He’s just like the hard rock on mountain under his pen, the sense of national pride and self reliance are deep in his soul. What he’s exploring is a broad and brand-new way of Chinese ink painting, on which he is walking towards the world with his out-of-the-ordinary works that are loved by more and more people.