Yifang Zheng
All my recent creations have been completed under my imagination, and I have not sketched the reference. I sometimes draw sketches to depict objects, but I don't do that when I create. I am a bit stubborn. When I paint objects, I unconsciously want to paint them very carefully, very similar, so that I almost restore the appearance of the objects. It's not that it's bad, but it's not the feeling I want my works to show.
When I create based on imagination, I am actually describing the image of the object in my memory in my mind. This object must be more fuzzy than the real object in front of me. One of the advantages of this is that I am not trapped in the description of unnecessary details in the picture. When the more details I draw, the more careful and real I draw, the mystery and fuzziness of the picture I want will be greatly weakened. The second advantage is that when I observe the picture in my mind, actually the picture I see is the integration of images of all the things I remember before. The integration process is affected by my subjective impression and personal experience. In other words, the image has gone through an abstract process, before it is painted on the canvas it already had the quality and unique sense of form of abstract painting, so my painting has also formed a certain personal style, which is also based on my own quality.
Sometimes I start to draw directly on the canvas with my imagination, but most of the time I still draw a lot of sketches, such as the one I finished recently, hands and feet. The bowl in the picture was originally an idea in my creation of a large number of still life image sketches. Recently, I like this idea more and more, so I drew it. It's easy to see from the sketch that this is a bowl made up of two hands and five fingers. I give a bowl some breath of life, just like other paintings in my still life series.
This idea comes from the action of holding water with hands, just like the action of drinking water of primitive human, which means returning to the original. Nowadays, the birth of tools, including bowls, has replaced the hands of human beings, making people work more efficiently, so the pace of life has been accelerating. But in this fast-paced era, people have lost something. I also want to change the bowl back to people's hands to indicate the significance behind these new objects. Why people pursue material life unremittingly but can never satisfy their desires? Maybe people can slow down occasionally to think about themselves and the meaning of life.
You can see that I have drawn a sketch for every object in the picture in order to determine the final composition of the picture. I care about the composition of the picture very much, which is the key for me to achieve a balanced state. I was asked why I like to draw a glass tea table. I like to draw this transparent thing. I like to see the change of color and texture when the object passes through the glass, and I can see the reflection of the object, which is very suitable for composing the mysterious picture I want.
I drew this bowl many times because its image is really difficult to control. At the beginning, what I drew was more like two hands, not like a bowl. If I saw it as a bowl, it was really not practical and beautiful. After many modifications, it became what it is today. I prefer this feeling. Without the rough feeling, it becomes more refined and more like a bowl. Maybe even few people can see that this is a pair of hands, which is exactly what I want to feel. First of all, the starting point of my thinking is indeed the bowl, which represents material, while my other thinking is based on material, so I prefer to draw it more like a bowl. Secondly, I like the feeling of relying my imagination on an object, just like I often regard the shape of branches and leaves of a tree as the face of a man. Almost every painting of mine has these things waiting for the audience to savor. I think what people see is what they want to see, so everyone can see different things on the same object, and that It doesn't matter what an object is actually like. It doesn't matter whether the tree really has a face.
The following picture is the tree whose leaves look like human faces. It's also an example of painting directly on canvas without sketching. After I say this sentence, some people may find that the oh tree is a personal face, and some people still can't see it. I'm not sure, but I do like this feeling. This feeling makes me feel very free, because I didn't create objects just for others to see. I was painting to express my interest. I would also be happy if someone could feel the secret of this painting as well as the quiet and peaceful atmosphere.
After drawing this picture, I have a lot of new ideas. First of all, I feel that my other works are a little discordant on its side. I want to draw several more pictures for it to form a group. Here are the later sketches. But in the end I chose to give up the sketches.
At first, I thought of a human figure composed of four paintings, and I also drew a color manuscript. But later, I found that no matter how I drew it, the human figure was too obvious, and the most critical facial details were all concentrated in the lower left corner of the painting, which was obviously out of balance. So I decided to stop. Sure enough, the purpose of painting is too intentional, but it will lose a lot of things.
I also mentioned in the Artists' Talk that I created an image of a person. Recently, I started to draw him into oil paintings. This is the sketch I drew for him. There's nothing to say about the sketch itself. After all, it's not a complete work, but something interesting has happened to it.
I used the iPad to draw this picture. I divided several layers for the convenience of modification, not very rigorous. I accidentally saw in the list that every shape of my layers was pretty good-looking, so I took them apart and saved them separately. At present, I don't have any specific ideas and plans for them, but I think I have some new ideas. First of all, it can verify whether every part of the picture is good-looking, elegant and balanced. Second, it also provides some inspiration for my future creation or display methods.
