Nature a recurring theme in this brushless art
Print Edition
EDITOR’S note:
HANDICRAFT arts are slowly dying in the era of bustling mega-cities. People are too busy or too disinterested to keep alive the skills of their forebears. As part of this year’s Shanghai Citizens Art Festival, a competition was held to select 100 professional and amateur artisans who are “Top Talent in Craftsmanship.” This is the fourth in a series of profiles of some of the winners – people striving to keep old skills alive for future generations.
WANG Minggao’s mountains, caves and groves are painted with gravity instead of a brush.
For two years, the 53-year-old art lover and former textile-dye technician has been creating his own abstract world by letting paint flow on sheets of paper.
“I feel like I’m the creator of the universe when I’m painting,” said Wang, who lives in the Putuo District and works as a janitor to make ends meet.
His physical “universe” is a 36-square-meter apartment in a dilapidated neighborhood along Langao Road.
Fanatical about colors since he was young, Wang enrolled in a local college of textiles in the 1980s to study dyeing, and then he went on to work as a technician at factories in Shanghai and Guangdong Province. In the early 2000s, he dabbled in ceramics and sale of chemicals, but those businesses went nowhere.
“I was overwhelmed by imagination and motivated to become my own master, but my meager means couldn’t support my ambition,” Wang said.
The idea of artwork using just paint and water dawned on him when he studied “paper marbling” during the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. A master from Turkey exhibited the art of transferring colors and patterns floating on the surface of water onto sheets of paper.
Drawing on his knowledge of paint and chemicals, Wang decided to experiment with brushless art. Paint, ink, chemicals and paper turned his home into a laboratory of sorts. Wang had to wear a gas mask at times and ask his wife and daughter to leave home temporarily when certain chemicals were used.
“It’s all about experimentation, just like I’ve done all my work life,” he said. “Different combinations of paint and subtle altering of the surface of the paper produce different effects.”
Wang usually puts a layer of paint at the bottom of a piece of paper, and then, with a turn of hand, he lets gravity distribute the paint on the paper or drain from the paper. Karst caves and mountains, motifs common in his paintings, are presented with abstract textures in blocks or gritty features.
Wang said none of the paintings can be pre-planned before the paint starts to flow. Every attempt is unique. For an artist who practices the ancient Chinese exercise of qigong, there is also a spiritual element to his work.
He named one of his favorite works “Energy of Spring.” It uses green paint to give the impression of a thawing landscape in early spring, with sprouts of greenery here and there.
“Every corner of the painting feels like a pore that’s breathing,” he said.
His 11-year-old daughter preferred to call the piece “The Fire of Youth.”
“I name most of my paintings, but everything is open to interpretation,” Wang said.
Not having the money to travel, Wang takes inspiration from pictures on the Internet and from landscapes in picture magazines.
He admits he is often surprised and thrilled by the way one of his artworks turns out.
“I call this mountain with reddish textures a smoldering volcano in its nascent shape, when the universe came into being,” he said of one of his paintings. “Both my paintings and the universe are pure chance, but pleasant.”
Wang wishes his works could reach a wider audience and even make him some money to support his family, but profit is not his goal.
“Money always corrupts art,” he said.
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