Li Heng, a national first-class artist, a member of the Anhui Branch of the China Artists Association, the director of the Art Committee of the Shanghai Innovation and Research Base of the National Academy of Painting of China, a part-time professor of East China Normal University, a registered artist of the Master Art Committee of the Shanghai Collection Association, a painter of the Shanghai Municipal Academy of Collections and Painting, the director of the Calligraphy and Painting Creation Office of the Military Supply Cadre Training Base of the Chengdu Military Region, a visiting professor of the Qiannan Normal University for Nationalities, a member of the China Democratic Construction Association, a special painter of the China Academy of Calligraphy and Painting, and a cultural and artistic ambassador of the Belt and Road Initiative.
Since 1999, he has participated in many large-scale painting exhibitions at home and abroad. Among them, there was the 13th Qingzhou "Invitation Exhibition of Contemporary Calligraphy and Painting Masters" in the autumn of 2016, the 14th Poly "Invitation Exhibition of Contemporary Calligraphy and Painting Masters" in the spring of 2017, and the "From Huang to Distant Mountains: Li Hengzhongcai Landscape Painting Exhibition of Belt and Road Countries" in the summer of 2017, which was sponsored by the China Cultural Management Association, Xinhua Net, Huangshan Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government, and was held at the Huangshan Art Museum. In 2017, he was invited by Xinhua News Agency and other units to become a painter of the "Belt and Road, High-spirited" large-scale transnational cultural exchange group. Li Heng lived up to his expectations and spent more than 30 days sketching all the way, creating a number of Chinese paintings with the theme of "Belt and Road". Nine of them were collected by the mainland embassies in nine countries, and the ambassadors spoke highly of Li Heng's contemporary, silk-road spirit and exquisite painting skills!
Pen and ink write spring and autumn, full of rhyme and qiankun - reading Li Heng's collection of landscape paintings has a feeling
Li Heng, a well-known name. Before we met, I knew Li Heng's name. The impression left by the first meeting is: handsome appearance, decent manners, low-key, not much speech, kindness and wisdom, quick thinking, and a painter's style.
After a period of exchanges, Li Heng's image gradually became clear in my mind, and his artistic talent and achievements also made me have more understanding. The average person thinks that to know an artist, you must first look at his paintings, which has a certain truth. But I think that to know an artist, it is even more necessary to look at people, to see people's character and to know people's hearts, and to combine looking at character with looking at art, and to look at it in three dimensions, comprehensively, historically, and realistically. In my observation, Li Heng's character is benevolent, modest, plump, and noble, and likewise, his paintings or art are noble and elegant, and they also respond to the words of the ancients. "The character is already high, the charm has to be high", "the character is not high, the ink cannot be dropped". In my opinion, behind Li Heng's character and art, what is reflected is decades of art cultivation, the accumulation of life experience, the improvement of the realm of life, and the integration of character and art, and Li Heng's collection of landscape paintings is a microcosm of the fusion of other people's character and art, a real portrayal of life.
Li Heng is good at landscape painting, he assiduously studied and studied Gongbi landscape, splash ink landscape, ancient landscape, modern landscape, Western painting landscape, from which to explore different artistic styles, expression methods, artistic creation, in the long exploration of Li Heng gradually put the color ink landscape as the main direction of attack, the modern aesthetic taste and oil painting creation skills and painting style into their own color ink landscape, so that multiple elements overlap, blend, glue, so that Chinese painting can conceive, express, performance more colorful, more interesting, more interesting, More pleasing to the eye.
In 2014, "China Painting and Calligraphy" published a full-page of Li Heng's fine art works, which are some of the fine works of the "Selected Works of the First Exhibition of the National Tour Exhibition of Chinese Landscape Painter Li Heng in Shanghai", most of these works are grand in scenes, magnificent in momentum, full in composition, rigorous in structure, elegant in color, natural, both the tuotuo atmosphere of the mountains and rivers, and the exquisite beauty of the subtleties, giving people a strong perspective impact.
In Li Heng's artistic career, he also particularly liked the creation of snow landscape paintings. In this way, his "Early Snow", "Taihang Snow Rhyme", "Autumn Rhyme", "Autumn River Sail Shadow", "Eye Snow", "Taihang Spring", "Fishing Alone in the Tongue of the Han River", "Northern Scenery", etc., or the junction of wind and snow, snowflakes flying; or ice and snow, snow and fog lock the mountains; or snow stops in the sky, wrapped in silver; or the distant mountains, the spring at the foot of the mountain near the mountain is thick; or the snow scenery is mutually radiant, and the water rapids are long and symphonic... The artistic conception of snow, the rhythm of beauty, the scenery of winter, the budding of spring, the width is extraordinarily demon-burning, and everywhere gives people unlimited general thoughts.
In fact, I am unable to be competent in my comments on Li Heng's fine art works, and I cannot say a word. This is because the famous painters Guan Shanyue, Bai Gengyan, Guo Gongda, Zhu Xiukun, and others have already given high evaluation and affirmation, and they have built neighbors at a high level, finished the picture, and made an appropriate conclusion. Another reason is that I have limited knowledge and can't do it. Therefore, I can only express some immature opinions in a perceptive way. To say a word from the heart, I have great admiration for Li Heng's spirit of diligent exploration, dare to innovate, and dare to highlight the personalized pen and ink language, especially in the following two aspects. First, the relationship between ink and color ink is handled. Li Heng has a good understanding and grasp of ink landscape painting, because the word "ink" seems to be closer to the expression of Chinese painting. But "ink painting" is not equal to the whole of Chinese painting, and "ink painting" is not just the relationship between "water and ink". Li Heng knows very well that "ink painting" is a big idea, and "color ink" is only "color ink", it is a broad concept, "color ink", contains many colors. However, most of the traditional Chinese landscape paintings are based on "ink painting", and rarely use "color ink" as the tone. Li Heng in the balance of the two, on the basis of tradition, focus on the "color ink", in the setting of color to open up the distance with the traditional "ink", as close as possible to modern life, the aesthetic requirements of modern people, he sometimes directly put a strong color on the picture, on the basis of the accumulation of ink, layer by layer, or use the "ticking method" to enhance the color effect of the painting, so that the picture appears more majestic, rough, thick, durable, some works are also abstracted from the figurative, clear become hazy, It gradually formed its own pen and ink language. Second, there is also a good personality expression in the use of techniques, penmanship, and ink techniques. Li Heng often uses a variety of techniques such as splashing, dyeing, hooking, sprinkling, rubbing, dotting and other techniques when painting, sometimes sprinkling freely, sometimes using both hook and dye, especially for the halo, puffing, expansion, and atomization of color ink, which is handy, melting seamlessly, has a unique technique to use and process, and the "color ink" changes of many works are like porcelain into the kiln, after more than 1000 degrees of high temperature washing, it has reached the miracle effect of "kiln change" that does not depend on human will. Many of Li Heng's works are footnotes of "kiln change", which often feels refreshing. And this kind of work is not only difficult to imitate, but also can not repeat the original work, which is probably an innovation.
Li Heng's pen is a mountain and a water, a grass and a tree, a scene and a color, all of which show the brilliance, diversity and vastness of color ink, and all tell the beauty, charm, elegance and agility of nature. Sometimes we can comprehend the grandeur of the atmosphere, the grandeur of the dry, sometimes we can appreciate the beautiful and fantastic changes of the world, and sometimes we can appreciate the author's passionate unrestrainedness, the breadth of the heart, and the breadth of the mind. From one masterpiece after another, we can also feel the author's pen moving, thinking, feeling in the pen rhyme, artistic conception, imagery and will quality, which is the extension of the soul to art, the sublimation of art between academics, the expansion of art to the spirit, the expansion of limited to infinite, what we read in Li Heng's works is the feeling of extravagance, the soul of landscape, the rhyme of color ink, the god of essence. Reading Li Heng's works, I am thinking about a problem, maybe there are many things in life that may not be done, or may not be done a lot, or not necessarily done perfectly, but the wonderful thing is to do what you like to do, and in the process of doing it, it continues to quietly precipitate, silently accumulate, and slowly unfold, which will be filled with a beautiful future, and even pregnant with magnificent scenes. I believe that Li Heng has a thick precipitation and accumulation, and will surely accumulate thick and thin hair!
(As a member of the Chinese Writers Association, a famous Chinese calligraphy and painting critic, an executive vice president of the Shanghai Municipal Cppcc Calligraphy and Painting Institute, the editor-in-chief of the Chinese Popular "Tianhe Art" calligraphy and painting magazine, and the vice chairman of the Shanghai Municipal Organ Calligraphers Association)