Newman Huo

SHENZHEN-BASED artist Xie Bingyong wants to treat the “watercolor sketch” as a separate genre of art and pursue an ambitious project, which he calls the “watercolor sketch movement.”

Xie made several thousand watercolor sketches of landscapes and people of the minorities in West China during two lone trips to Kashi in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and one trip to Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan Province this year.

More than 20 sketched watercolors, selected from the three trips, are being displayed at the private Portofino Gallery in Overseas Chinese Town until Nov. 30.

As his one-man art exhibition opened Nov. 10, Xie’s new book, “Xie Bingyong’s Watercolor Sketch Movement,” published by the Lingnan Fine Arts Publishing House, was also released.

“Many people may know the two separate words ‘watercolor’ and ‘sketch,’ but they may not know what a watercolor sketch really is,” Xie said at the opening ceremony of his exhibition.

According to Xie, the phrase, “watercolor sketch,” is an invention of his own and can be used as both a verb and a noun.

“By the verb phrase, I mean sketching through the medium of watercolors. By the noun phrase, I mean that watercolor sketches themselves are finished works of art,” he said.

“Through launching the watercolor sketch movement, I aim to raise watercolor sketch to a separate art genre, which I hope will take an important place on the contemporary Chinese art stage,” he said.

Born in 1969 on Donghai Island in Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province, Xie studied fine arts at Suixi Teachers’ College in Guangdong Province in 1981.

Xie moved to Shenzhen and began a four-year study course at Shenzhen University after teaching for five years in Zhanjiang.

He spent another five years working for the Shenzhen Municipal Administration of Land Resources and Real Estate, and then went on to study watercolor at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing from 2000 to 2002. In 2003, he set up his own company, Huaxia Zhongyuan Real Estate Consulting Center, in Shenzhen.

So far, Xie’s watercolor sketches from the three trips have won praise from the country’s leading watercolor artists and critics.

“From his watercolor sketches, we can probably feel his energetic enthusiasm and casual tastes and delve into the deeper meaning of art and life,” said Wang Weixin, deputy director of the watercolor commission of the Chinese Artists’ Association in Beijing.