Newman Huo

THE dreamlike bird and flower paintings Shenzhen painter Chen Xiangbo creates are just like his personality: clear, simple and serene. Today, these paintings are increasingly accepted by art collectors at home and abroad.

Invited by the Hong Kong Academy of Calligraphy and Painting, Chen staged a one-man art exhibition in the Hong Kong City Hall in Central, Hong Kong, over the weekend.

More than 20 of the 34 bird and flower paintings on display at the exhibit had been purchased by Hong Kong art collectors before the exhibit ended yesterday.

“For me, painting is not only a profession or a means of making a living, but also a part of my life or a life style I have chosen,” said Chen, 45, art director of Guan Shanyue Art Museum.

He has been trying to create a dreamlike art style in his bird and flower paintings over the past two decades. All elements in his works, such as lotus flowers, rocks, banyan trees, swimming fish, and white egrets, are put together to create his own world of fantasy.

Wang Jia, associate researcher of the Guangdong Provincial Museum of Fine Arts, said that dreams, like an all-pervasive spirit, spread naturally through Chen’s every painting.

Wang Yuanyang, a Shenzhen-based poet, believes Chen has created one daydream after another in his works over the past 20 years.

“Chen’s paintings are particularly suitable for people to view with a calm heart deep in the night and, even when they appreciate them in the daytime, they still feel like sleepwalking in the moonlight, because his paintings can take people from bustling and hectic reality into a world of fantasy,” Wang said.

A native of Hunan Province, Chen was admitted into the Chinese painting department of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 1982. In 1984, he began to study bird and flower paintings from the acclaimed painter Zhou Chuan’an, specializing in fine brushwork paintings. He went on to teach fine arts in the Zhaoqin Teachers’ College in Guangdong Province after graduation in 1986. In 1991, he returned to the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts to pursue a master’s degree in Chinese painting.

Before graduating in July 1994, the Guangzhou-based master painter Guan Shanyue (1912-2000) invited him to take part in the preparatory work for the establishment of Guan Shanyue Art Museum in Shenzhen because Guan had decided to donate all his art works to the Shenzhen government.

Chen spent more than one year from the beginning of 1996 through May 1997 staying at Guan’s home in Guangzhou and helping sort through all the art works and documents Guan had donated.

“During the one and a half years’ stay with Guan, I had a face-to-face experience with the master painter in both daily life and art,” Chen said. “This period of time has benefited me a lot because I’ve learned from Guan first and foremost how to be an honest person in life before becoming an accomplished artist,” he said.

Chen’s acquaintance with Guan’s works has also made him an expert in the study of the late Chinese master painter in China today.

Believing one artist’s peaceful state of mind has a direct influence on his artistic creations, Chen attaches great importance to his constant concern for a quiet spiritual life.

“After having practiced painting for a certain time, I realized painting is never something to be learned,” he said. “Instead, the secret of painting lies in an artist’s intuition or power of (thought) or comprehension, which can be achieved only when the artist keeps a quiet heart,” he said.

In recent years, Chen has developed the habit of going to his workshop in Guan Shanyue Art Museum and quietly painting alone there, whenever he is free during weekends or holidays.

“Besides the routine daily life and work, an artist should leave some time and space for his spiritual life, paying attention to those needs in his inner heart and enjoying his seclusion from the outside world,” Chen said.

In 1992, he spent two months traveling alone in China’s northwestern provinces to study ancient Chinese fine arts. In 2003 and 2007, he made two trips to the Tibet Autonomous Region, touring almost every corner of the region and finishing numerous sketches. In 1999, he traveled through more than a dozen European countries to study fine art. In 2005, as a visiting scholar, he was invited to Australia to conduct research. He has held one-man art exhibitions in Japan and South Korea.

The hearing of a lawsuit in a court in Beijing on July 6, 2007 brought Chen into the limelight in the country’s capital.

At the end of April last year, Chen’s lawyer filed a lawsuit against a Beijing restaurant for using his paintings for room decorations without permission.

In November last year, the Beijing court found against the Beijing restaurant, ordering the owners to pay Chen more than 30,000 yuan (US$4,100) in compensation and to issue a public apology.

“It is very interesting to see that a Beijing restaurant has infringed the intellectual property rights of a Shenzhen painter because Shenzhen used to be called ‘a cultural desert,’” Chen said.

In fact, it was at the beginning of the 1990s that Chen’s paintings began to enter the art market. The latest statistics provided by www.artron.net show that more than 20 paintings by Chen have gone under the hammer for more than 500,000 yuan in various auction houses on the Chinese mainland.