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Edutainment > Articles on Art > Heilongjiang Art School > Guan Housheng - Essay by the Artist

Old Corn, 1991
copyright Guan Housheng

In this essay Goun Housheng briefly describes his artistic development from relaistic landscape paintings to his more modern style in his art work of the 1990s and after 2000.

Guan Housheng is a leading artist from the North-East province of Heilongjiang in China, an important 'Art School' known as 'Beidahuang' (vast barren land). It is next to Yunan in the South-West a leading center for the arts of printmaking. Guan Housheng works in the traditional woodblock technique. His print works have won several prizes of the two most important annual Chinese art exhibitions, the National Art Exhibition and the National Print Exhibition. The artist's works are in the collections of the China National Art Museum and the London based Muban Foundation. 

The following text was written by the artist, and edited by artelino.

About my Art Works

"My ealier works were mostly landscape designs showing images from the countryside. Nearly all the works were painted in realistic style. What these paintings revealed were all my true feelings and emotions. Although these works could not be called items of fine quality, yet they still could touch people's hearts.

With my improvement on the road of pursuing art as well as my developed mental state as an artist, I was no longer satisfied with the style of realistic images of natural landscapes, which paid much attention to the expressing of my own mood. I always tried to draw a painting mixed together with my own feelings, such as experience of survival, comprehension and thinking towards culture, personal emotions and spirit. Thus psychological pursuit resulted in my concentration on the format. Naturally, there emerged a new way of expression in my paintings.

Let me present briefly my ideal when I was painting."

Fall Sacrificial (1989)

"The fields of corn harvested in the deep fall were no longer emitting the bright golden color, and thus made me feel depressed. It was a feeling as if I had to see a friend passing away. Such kind of feelings were hard to be described. This common crop reminded me of common people. The circulation of such ordinary life experiences an endless process: from sowing to growing to harvest. However, it was this common life that kept the human world existing and developing. I did feel the greatness of common life.

In aspect of the composition of the picture, there centrally congregates piles of corns, posing a figure like a monument which forms a sharp contrast against the fields of stubble left behind. The painting carried my complex emotion of the earth in fall, and it was also a monument in the ordinary life, expressing a kind of my consciousness towards life."

Red House (1991)

Red House, 1991
copyright Guan Housheng

"Three levels of hierarchy built up the sturcture of the whole design. These levels might represent the sky, or the earth, or maybe nothing at all. Such hierarchy made the real red house located in a unreal interspace. Facing this conversant but strange picture, the people's normal association of a red house with clay walls was interdicted. Instead, people should use their own life experience to feel and realize the signification of the clay wall and pyramid-like red house standing erect inside of the wall. As opinions and thoughts would differ from each other, I hope this design would be finished together with my audience."

Ripe Corn (1992)

"The painting absorbed the elements of thousand-handed Kwan-yin (God of Mercy) in its structure design. The piles of ripe corn were portrayed in the sanctitude of deity and Buddha. Red is the basic color of the whole picture, displaying a spritual world excited, active, mysterious and heavenly."

Red Bud I (1998)

Red Bud, 1998
copyright Guan Housheng

"The window in the painting was abstractionalized, which made the image distant from reality. This window was an indication containing a special meaning. The world outside of the window was wonderful while the colorful flowers and buds were spreading out of the window frame,as if the inside and outside of the window would be syncretized before long."

Guan Housheng

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Heilongjiang Art School