Six years quickly passed by without my knowing it since I graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts. In this short span of six years I’ve had smooth sailings as well as hard journey; life lessons came to me too early or too late, dropped me in a confused blank and then a relief. Once knew how to give up, I have a better understanding about persistence. Today is a corner where I am standing and watching my other self walking away, like a stunning dream destined to wake up and then you have to come down to earth.
Thanks to my enthusiasm for painting, I am still able to sit in front of a blank canvas for more than a dozen hours and fill it up with my grotesque imagination, like I always did when I was in school…Thinking about how many paintings that I have painted, I can get some comfort every time I feel tired.
My love to painting begins from my childhood, when my parents both went to work and left me alone at home for many hours with various color pencils. But I rarely felt bored. Time flies, I never supposed that I would still be painting in this age and painting would have become an important part of my life.
Well, taking creating as work is naturally exciting, especially when you fling yourself into the creating of a heat-touching dream, it is enjoying yourself to the full. People digging in painting are usually idealistic, dream-oriented and expectant in the progress of painting, and this progress is like a plant’s growing its branches, it is miracle but expectable. Sometimes you do not know where you are going to, whether you are repeating your old way, maybe after a long journey you finally find that you were just going round in circles trying to leave the starting point. However, that is part of the charm of being a painter, as if we got back to the age of geographical great discovery, there are so many things unknown, so many mysteries, when you are sailing in the sailboat, even angry waves are worth looking forward to. Since sometimes rough road is the way, the only thing you can do is to go ahead bravely, to walk into the dark night, to celebrate the morning glow. I always remember when I was in high school I’ve fallen in love, although there was the SARS terror, in order to see the girl who was my girlfriend at that time I walked twenty-five miles by myself in dark, I walked all night without company, without light, and almost without a clear direction, that was like the journey of being a painter. You have no fear of dark, no fear of being alone, no fear of being lost, only if you have love. When you have experienced the entire night, you will see the growing morning glow.
The works in this exhibition were finished in this couple of years. From my graduate works to now, I have always tried to present the world I’ve seen in my works as felicitous as possible, it’s like a game, I tell stories in the paintings, my stories, other people’s stories; sometime I mix all the stories so the world I present looks like a dream, sunny, peaceful but with underlying uneasiness. I like the things warm, beautiful and keeping me touched, such as sunshine, growing colorful flowers and lush plants, quiet girls, all cute animals, etc. On the other hand, in my eyes the real world is full of contradictions and conflicts. In the background behind the beautiful peaceful front scene, an air of gloom is hanging over, you can see colorful mushroom cloud, rolling flood, spewing volcano, heavy black clouds, storms, wars, etc. I am trying to find a more appropriate language by putting some contradictory factors and colors in one picture repeatedly, and I getting close to my realization of the world gradually. In this two years of work I’ve also put more attention on improving my technique spent more time on the details of work, I tried to present my own world on the canvas by touches and colors as vivid as possible… because the richness of picture is presented via details, so well-processed details will add vitality and expression to picture effectively.
As for a work, the most pathetic thing is the increase of desire with decrease of happiness. I had a simple and happy time when I was a child drawing at home alone, when I drew small solders and horses on the wall and imagined that I was the general I felt really good. But when I grow up and the youth left me quietly, life becomes richer but sometimes I am exhausted by myself. However, I still want to keep my simplicity and sincerity, and the easy happiness of painting, no matter how the world will change, because I always keep dreams in my heart.
Zhao Yanan
2013