Li Shucheng, an advocate of realistic oil paintings, has remained loyal to his artistic ideals throughout his career. In seeking his own unique form of pictorial expression and modeling characteristics, he is committed to the reflection of real life in art and the exploration of the medium of oil paintings. He is forever searching for the essence and connotations of paintings, trying to depict our life as it is and the rich emotions found in the minds of human beings with the paintbrush in his hand. In this way he conveys his own thoughts and sublimates real life into the beauty of art with his unique ability of expression.
Li studied at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in his early years. Trained in a strict academic approach, he developed a robust modeling ability. Not confined by grand narration and subject matters of revolutionary history, his oil paintings involve a wide range of topics, such as the affectionate portrayal of the beautiful rivers and mountains and human landscape of his motherland.
In his method of creation, Li draws heavily from others and boldly innovates. He ingeniously integrates the lines of traditional Chinese paintings with the color patches, shade and shadow, and detailed painting skills of oil paintings. Abandoning the large areas of coloring found in traditional oil paintings, he uses the free and relaxing lines of traditional Chinese paintings as the “skeleton”. The strokes he draws are forceful and short, and most patterns are square in shape. The vigor of his strokes and short and succinct structure give a hard “metallic” sense to the objects in his pictures.
Using his brush as a knife, he cuts apart his pictures; taking the gorgeous color patches as the skin, he piles it up layer upon layer to form three-dimensional structures like diamond or crystal. The tones and shade and shadow are finely adjusted around different themes by taking the pictures as a whole, so the color patches are distinct yet closely connected like a “core line” shuttling back and forth. The pictures display a visual effect of “separate but not scattered” and create transparent and consistent beauty from all angles like “crystal”, forming the structural logic of dialectical unity. With a strong sense of consistency and layers, his pictures have a striking focus and a unified theme, worthy of careful scrutiny and appreciation.
The Land of Splendors: Li Shucheng Art Exhibition selects the fine works created by Li Shucheng in recent years. It is divided into three sections, covering various subjects including the holy land of the red revolution, large rivers and high mountains, and plants such as kapok, litchi and peony. It not only inherits the tradition of realism through new expression and application and innovates new visual elements in oil painting, but also explores the national character and ethos of our times with new concepts. It sincerely expresses the desire to pay tribute to the nation’s heroes, eulogize the majestic landscape of the motherland, and pray for her prosperity and strength.