Traditional Chinese Painting Experience

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traditional Chinese painting experienceAll of my work over the past 30 years has been influenced in some way by traditional Chinese painting techniques and related principles, which I studied for two years in Beijing as a teenager. This training taught me to capture the random organic configurations of trees, mountains and water and to seek to portray the essential contrasts found in any subject. This is especially evident in the calligraphic line quality used to render the figures and landscapes I produced in undergraduate school. The traditional Chinese landscape technique that I was taught, known as “Xieyi”, is characterized by a dynamic contrast between dry brush application and varying shades of ink wash. Color is added in a rather deliberate fashion ranging from transparent to highly opaque. Having spent much of my childhood immersed in beautiful country settings such as my father’s farm in Pennsylvania, summer camp in Canada and boarding school in rural Vermont, I was particularly drawn to nature from an early age. My Chinese teachers reinforced this propensity. As time passes I see how this influence is coming full circle in my focus on earth conscious themes.

Click on the page below for greeting cards of traditional Chinese painting:
 
traditional Chinese painting experience