Xu Junxuan on My Landscape Paintings

Looking back at your work, why do landscape paintings account for such an overwhelming majority? Following the chronological development of your work, you initially painted a variety of subjects, including figures and still lifes, but over time your work became almost exclusively devoted to landscapes, to the point where other subjects virtually disappeared altogether. Why is that?

It is simply a matter of personal interest. I really enjoy painting landscapes. My earlier works on other subjects tended to be more narrative, and the paintings inevitably carried a great deal of plot and contextual information. By contrast, the subject of “landscape” is much more abstract in terms of the information conveyed within the image. In most cases, a painting simply conveys a certain atmosphere or emotion. The viewer does not need to take “understanding” as an obligation. It can be approached more casually and freely.

Could you talk about your approach to creating landscape paintings?

Many of my ideas come from my resource library—traditional Chinese landscape painting. I place great importance on “趣味qu-wei” (interest, playfulness, or wit). Take Cold Spring, for example. If I were to describe the painting in words, it would simply be: there is a house among the trees on the mountainside. It looks like a miniature bonsai or a toy, which I find very interesting! Since I work in oil paint, the possibilities of the medium naturally make “color” another important field of expression in my work. These two aspects together constitute my individual artistic character.

I favor expressing “意境 yi-jing” (artistic atmosphere or poetic mood), which I also call “poetic quality.” This is what I seek to convey. The form I use to express it is “tonality”: through color tones, broad relationships of black and white, and contrasts, I convey atmospheres such as heaviness and lightness. Every painting has its own tonal character. This is essential and fundamental to the work. The narrative or story, by contrast, is optional and can be included or omitted depending on the circumstances.

Tonality is extremely important to my painting. Once the tonality has established the foundation, individual areas can change freely. There is no longer a need to pursue meticulous detail; the image does not have to be worked too tightly. When it is natural and generous, the painting acquires an emotional quality.

Your works do not emphasize visual impact, yet your personal style remains highly distinctive. On the level of the image, it seems that your style is achieved through certain highly individualized techniques that you repeatedly employ. We can observe these techniques recurring throughout your work. Could you talk about these characteristics of your painting?

One characteristic is that my compositions are not constrained by the rules of Western perspective. If I need to distinguish between foreground and background, or near and far, I simply use variations in color and tonal value. In fact, if you look closely at most of my works, they are paintings with a very “unorthodox” approach to perspective. I call it “neither-one-thing-nor-another perspective.” Sometimes the image creates an illusion: it is both flat and three-dimensional, while the relationships between foreground and background are themselves an illusion. Take Home Mountains, for example. The spatial relationships between the village houses—their positions in front of or behind one another—are deliberately unclear. In short, it is not strict at all!

The second characteristic is that although I often like to depict various qualities of light and color, I am not bound by the laws of light and shadow. Whether it is sunrise, sunset, or moonlight at night, the lighting is designed according to the tonal needs of the composition. As for whether the presence of light must necessarily produce shadows, that is not important in my painting; sometimes there are not even distinct areas of light and shade. Although the paintings are Western-style paintings, their aesthetic sensibility is closer to the spirit of Chinese painting. I often contemplate Huang Binhong's saying, “With the light of a single candle, the whole body becomes imbued with spirit.”

The third characteristic is that when depicting objects, I often use halos of light to blur their edges. This makes the objects appear flatter visually and reduces their sense of three-dimensionality. The image becomes more illusory and less realistic. This kind of softening and bleeding of edges, like the diffusion of water stains, is also commonly seen in the ink tones of Chinese painting. I find it beautiful, so I incorporate it into my own paintings.

Perhaps this transfer of technique is overly bold and spontaneous. After all, Chinese ink painting and Western oil painting employ entirely different materials and mediums. As a result, many people find it novel when they see me painting with “halos.” It does not immediately remind them of its origins in Chinese painting, yet it is indeed a technique rarely seen in traditional oil painting. Somehow, it has become one of my distinctive characteristics.

Chinese painting is particularly ingenious and beautiful when depicting mountains. When I paint mountain landscapes, I also use “dotting moss” (diantai), which is likewise borrowed from Chinese painting techniques. The influence of such masters as Bada Shanren, Huang Binhong, Pan Tianshou, and Lin Fengmian can be traced in my work.

The fourth characteristic is my pursuit of a sense of “chaos” or “muddiness.” I therefore often use palette knives and rollers while painting to mix and work the layers of pigment into one another, allowing the colors to become intertwined—“you within me, and me within you”—creating a rich and substantial surface.

Among your landscape paintings, it is difficult not to notice that Jiangnan is by far the predominant subject. Could you talk about this regional quality in your work?

I like painting water towns. Suzhou and Hangzhou are my spiritual homes. After all, I grew up here and have lived on this land for many years. The various landscapes of the water towns are deeply imprinted in my mind. When I paint, the selection and combination of source material is often a mixture of memory and imagination.

Take Dreaming of Hengtang, for example. I am certain that I have seen this embankment before, but I have searched for it several times in reality and have never been able to find it. Perhaps it was demolished. So I painted it from the memory in my mind.

Yet the viewpoint in the painting is a semi-aerial, bird's-eye perspective—one that could not actually exist in reality. Where, then, did I see such a Hengtang? This kind of fictional viewpoint often appears in my work. The scenes are both real and imaginary.

I also depict landscapes from northern China. For example, Mountain Village and Mountain Village at Sunset depict scenery in Hebei. Then there is Villiage Among the Green Mountains, which depicts a southern landscape. What is the difference? The first two paintings are “dry,” while the latter is “moist.” Unlike most artists, who focus on differences between north and south in terms of the physical forms of mountains and waterways, I seek to express the difference in their atmospheres.

By what criteria would you evaluate landscape painting, including your own work?

It's about expressing genuine feelings. If it looks good, that's all that matters.

Interviewed and edited by Xu Shan
June 5, 2015