The Mastery of Art Through Life Experiences
Art is the expression of emotion and emotion is the source of creation. In the creative process of painting, the artist expresses emotions through different artistic languages. With more than thirty years of industry experience in China, artist Tang He Wen established his artistic language through the exploration of a wide range of art styles. Currently residing in America. Artist Tang specializes in portrait, landscape, still life, and tranquil nature artworks. In figure paintings, he portrays the subject in a celestial state, emphasizing its shape, feature, and inherent charm. In landscapes, Tang focuses on the dualities of mountains and waterfalls, plains and fields, and the vastness of mountains ranges. The elegant illustration of nature conveys the artist’s inner peace, and is delivered to the spectator by the brush strokes which blend scenery and nature. For still life artworks, the artist focuses and suspends the subject in time and space to produce a vivid image and detailed illustration. The paintings characterize the painter's thoughts and feelings, and that artistic conception is profound, vivid, and carries rich connotation.
Artist Tang has a rooted interest for traditional Chinese culture. The style and color of Tang’s artworks demonstrate his pursuit of the expressive ideas behind Chinese famous mountains and rivers. Tang’s creations have always stemmed from the traditional ideas behind Chinese landscape. The pursuit of “mind expression” has introduced a new perspective into landscape paintings. Tang has the profound understanding that the influx of western paintings in the east has led the Chinese art circle to absorb the artistic essence of the west. Many Chinese artists of the older generation have achieved a very high realm of art in infusing Western and Chinese art styles, such as Zhao Wuji and Zhu Dequn. In Chinese traditional painting, Taoism is the foundation behind the works of these artists. Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou’s fundamental ideas of “Qi” and “Li” and "Dao" which means energy, practical efficiency, and moral path respectively, has been carried to landscape painting in the symbolic sense. The expression of philosophical ideology in the artworks of older generation Chinese artists has influenced the formation of artist Tang’s style. He traveled to many well-known mountains and rivers portrayed for thousands of years in Chinese paintings. These visits result in his representative artworks of “Sheep Gathering”, “Fortune”, and “Longevity”.
Becoming an artist is not an overnight phenomenon. Very few will realize that the path of becoming an artist means facing work, family, economic pressure, and other hardships that bring dreary to everyday life. When a work receives high appraisal from guests and, friends, at least it is comforting to realize that time and efforts were not in vain. The most meaningful part of the painting process is not skill. but the expression of one’s character. Style can unveil the word of true feelings for life and passion, and has become Tang’s core essence as an artist.
A successful creation will bring about great satisfaction and joy to the soul knowing that the original creations can deliver self-reflective and meditative effects. As an extension of Taoism, highly self-cultivated artists obtain morality and honesty. As long as one is true to themselves, inspiration is always there. Art is a form of ideology behind aesthetics. Art reflects upon image, shape, and experience rather than being abstract or scientific. The main purpose of art is to satisfy people's aesthetic pleasure and to provide them with aesthetic enjoyment. Therefore, an artistic purpose is to satisfy people's free experience of physical and mental harmony and at least comply with a person’ s pleasure principle. The artist’ s view of art is mainly based on their own ideas. The idea is the recondition of the art. Making meaningful personalized creative works count as art. A random spread of eggshells on the floor might not be art, but using the eggshell texture shape and integrating the characteristics of the medium may become a work of art. Art is a kind of spiritual enjoyment based on the individual's aesthetic preferences and is all around us.In the years of creation, artist Tang found the spiritual expression to fit his individual passage of life, and to convert spirit itself into expressive intuitions. Artist Tang also transforms the visual intuition of landscape to an enhanced, expressive, and observable form of art. Artist Tang stressed that there is a general consensus that the basic course of art starts from sketches. The practice of sketching will develop very rational knowledge of subjects by studying the forms that are derived from lines and shading that causes the dynamics in color and brings to the development of personal style, The most meaningful part of art is the personal style. Artistic style cannot be derived artificially, or by distortion or imitation of other artworks. Personal style is a result of many years of practice in combination with the natural exploration of life and the accumulation of experiences. Deliberate art will become vulgar and dull. Practice will create art that is full of vitality and passion, and brings about inner joy and the expansion of spiritual awareness of the environment. The artist has to infect people with emotions in order to inspire people. Artistic creation comes from life and beyond life. An artist's achievements and innovation cannot do without tending and teetering to the predecessors at all times. Only then can they achieve new heights in their artistic creations.
