Date: 9 Mar 2025 - 9 Mar 2025
Venue: Workshop Room, G/F, Fung Ping Shan Building, UMAG, HKU, 90 Bonham Road, Pokfulam
Since the 17th century, exchanges between Eastern and Western cultures have flourished, fostering deeper artistic connections. Wu Li, a master landscape painter of the early Qing dynasty, drew inspiration from the Western “S-curve” composition to refine the traditional three-part layout of near, middle, and far scenes in literati painting. The middle scene, through the elongation of rivers, creates a profound sense of depth via an elevated bird’s-eye perspective, distinguishing his work from that of the other five masters of the early Qing Orthodox School. This innovation became his unique contribution to Chinese painting. In terms of brushwork, Wu Li synthesized both the Southern and Northern Schools, employing techniques such as Wang Meng’s “ox-hair texture strokes” while also utilizing chiaroscuro effects to imbue the mountains and rocks with a sense of substance. This method allowed his work to maintain a harmonious balance between tradition and modernity.
As part of the exhibition “Wondrous Rivers: Exploring Chinese Landscape Paintings”, this workshop will introduce and analyze the artistic characteristics of Wu Li’s landscape paintings. Participants will learn the Ts’un method (brushstrokes for modeling or “wrinkles”) and experiment with incorporating Western compositional principles into traditional literati painting, all while exploring how landscape art shapes mountains, rocks, and spatial depth.
Instructor: Tsang Tseng Tseng
Tsang Tseng Tseng (曾貞貞), artist name Three Zan (三真), holds an MFA focused in traditional scholar painting of the Yangtze River Delta. She is currently a doctoral candidate at the China Academy of Art, a council member of the Macau Artist Society, the president of the Macau Contemporary Ink Painting Association, and a member of the Guangdong Literature and Art Critics Association. Since 2022, she has served as a lecturer at the City University of Macau.
Ms. Tsang, who has practiced ink and brush painting for two decades, is a classy artist from the vibrant city of Macau. Her character and personality were formed through experiences in different places. During her art studies at The China Academy of Arts in China, she embedded her knowledge with the Chinese philosophy; while working in her art studios in Hangzhou, the USA and Zurich (Switzerland), she formed her open and international perception of art. Being native from the world’s greatest gambling hub, namely, Macau, Ms. Tsang has a very open way of thinking and visualizing art, which makes her have the special ability of expressing the classic Chinese art in a very bold and interesting way.
Please refer to Chinese version.