Zhang Yun Guo
Zhang Yun Guo was born in Hailun, Heilongjiang Province, 1953.
Zhang was a former deputy-director of “Harbin Military District for the Second Retired Veteran Cadre’s Rest Home” in Heilongjiang, during which time he was engaged in cultural publicity work for the forces.
He fell in love with painting in his childhood. Self taught, he experimented with a variety of styles of art work, including sketching, oil painting, watercolors and traditional Chinese painting.
In 1988, he graduated from the Chinese Painting and Calligraphy correspondence university.
His traditional Chinese paintings mainly feature flowers and birds and his works have been displayed at home and abroad, gaining many prizes and accolades.
The work, “A Bright Future”, won “The Excellent Award” at the “Second Guardian of Light Exhibition” held by the Heilongjiang Provincial Public Security Bureau and the Provincial Association.
The art work featuring a white crane, “Yong Gang He Li – 永钢鹤立” has been used as the logo and trademark of Hong Kong’s “Wing Steel Jewelry Co., Ltd”.
In 1998, the work “Aspirations” won a Class Two award at the “New Era Art and Culture Seminar”.
A number of works have formed the collections of friends at home and abroad; including two works collected by the Japanese Art of War expert Mr. Hattori, and by Mr. Lu Luoba of Malaysia’s Art Research Association.
One of Zhang’s traditional Chinese paintings, exhibited at the “2006 Sino-Russian Veterans Beijing Arts Festival”, was later bought by the Russian Embassy.
15 of his works were selected for the subject of a set of stamps and featured “In the Contemporary Chinese Culture and Famous Stamps Feature Works”; this set of stamps has formed part of the National Museum, Museum of Chinese stamps and other national institutions’ collections, in addition to being collected by the United Nations Children’s Fund, as well as 10 countries’ foreign embassies including Germany, Japan, Korea and Libya.
Following this, the China National Philatelic Corporation issued a commemorative envelope of “Contemporary Chinese Culture and Famous Stamps Feature Works” postmarked Tiananmen Square, which was issued nationally.
A biography of Zhang has been entered in the “Chinese Contemporary Artists Famous Dictionary”, “The Chinese Contemporary Artists Dictionary”, “The Chinese Experts Dictionary”, and the “The Twenty-First Century of Chinese Talent Pool”, among others. He was also recommended as a “contemporary excellent painter” by “Today Ink” 2007, issue No.5.
He has since published “The Zhang Yun Guo Flower-Bird Painting Album” and was interviewed as a special guest by a documentary programme made by Hong Kong Sun TV.
Zhang is now a member of several leading art and cultural associations in China, including the “China Association for Promoting Enterprise & Culture”, director of the “Chinese Painter’s Traditional Chinese Painting Association”, senior artist of the “Chinese Painting Institute”, honorary president of the “Beijing Jinghua Lanting Calligraphy Institute”, and the “Harbin Art Association”, creative researcher for the “Harbin City Study of Calligraphy and Painting” and member of the “Veteran’s Organization of Painting and Calligraphy” in Shenyang Military Region.
Marie-Jose Walhof
Marie-Jose is an extremely talented painter and artist, as well as a lover of life, art and culture. A delightful person, she has a natural feeling for how energy combines and connects us and a perception of light and colour that just shines from her work.
Also a Taiji fan and Taiji player, she regularly visits Shanghai and other parts of China on business and to catch up with her Taiji learning!
She had a very successful art exhibition, held at the Narana Studios in 2007, where some of her wonderfully expressive and vivid paintings were displayed.
For more information about her work or her creative design ware, please contact Rose Oliver at Double Dragon Alliance Cultural Centre.
“Marie-Jose Walhof lives and works in Deventer, the Netherlands.
Her mission is to bring beauty into her life and her work as painter and graphic designer.
As well as being an artist in a direct sense, she is also an artist of life and someone who enjoys life.
Her source of inspiration is nature, in particular the bison. Her work is bright, pure and on the level: strong lines and intense colours, big gestures and plenty of movement.
But if you look carefully, you will see subtle refinement and an eye for detail.
You cannot avoid the challenge posed by her work.
This is true not only for the scope of her paintings, but also for the emotion and enthusiasm that splash forth from them”.
Narana Studios have recently moved to their new premises at KIC Art Centre, No.123-127 Jiangwan Stadium, 234 Songhu Road, where they staged an opening exhibition featuring some of their resident artists like Marie-Jose who entered 4 new paintings, as well as newcomers to the studio like Ralph Brancaccio.
Marie-Jose’s new paintings all featured her signature work of the American Bison, one of which was immediately snapped up by a discerning collector!
My personal favourite of the four, was the reflective bison at dusk; with its rich and luminous colours and the bison’s reflective mood and posture brilliantly captured, it conjured up a beautiful haunting scene of serenity in nature.
Marie-Jose’s work will continue to be exhibited at Narana’s Studio, along with 20 or more other artists.
So, whether your taste is for modern “street art” like Ralph Brancaccio’s, or oils, abstracts, or traditional style paintings; there’s a style and artist at the studio whose work will appeal to you.
Go along and be enchanted!
Quoted Jantine Sijbring
Senior Organization Adviser Deventer
Ralph Brancaccio
Street Art — feeling the pulse of the public.
Ralph G. Brancaccio voices his commitment to social change through his public art and arts education projects. In installations and other three-dimensional work such as “Silent March for HIV Prevention” and “Underneath It All”, Ralph has addressed such major issues as discrimination in AIDS awareness, human rights, and equality. His upcoming project, “Military Un-intelligence” focuses on the worldwide mechanical epidemic of land mines.
To assist him in raising funds for these projects he has opened this online store. One of the product lines was inspired by monoprints he creates on manhole covers in streets around the world. In this work he states,
“By putting myself at people′s feet, I can bring beauty up to their level, which causes them to look down.”
Brancaccio is a sponsored artist with New York Foundation for the Arts and his work is shown globally. He is also on the board of directors of TransCultural Exchange in Boston, MA and is a participating artist in their UNESCO sponsored “Tile Project”.
Ah Xin’s “Tiger Year” Traditional Chinese Painting Exhibition
Ah Xin, one of Shanghai’s foremost “Tiger” artists, recently held an art exhibition at the Shanghai Library on Huai Hai Road, featuring a gallery of his famous trademark tigers.
The event, which was sponsored by the Citibank based in Pudong, Shanghai and was well attended by a large audience of art lovers and collectors, as well as enthusiasts of traditional Chinese culture and art.
The tiger, which is a symbol of power and spirit in Chinese culture, was previously a traditional theme amongst Chinese paintings, but like the tiger itself, has become a subject rarely seen nowadays in modern Chinese art.
Mr. Ah Xin’s paintings were a wonderful tribute to traditional Chinese art, in addition to being a tribute to this majestic and hauntingly, beautiful creature.
Kellie O’Dempsey
Kellie O’Dempsey is an Australian artist, specializing in large-scale slightly abstract performance-drawing productions.
Some of her mural works are to found at Shanghai’s “M on the Bund” Crystal Bar, where she was commissioned to produce a large sweeping mural as background for their Chamber Music Concerts.
More examples of her work can be found on her website: www.kellieo.com
DDA’s New Art Director – Mr Xu Zhi Wen
DDA are honoured to welcome Mr Xu Zhi Wen as our association’s new Chief Art Director.
Mr Xu, whose 50th Anniversary Art Exhibition was held on 23rd October 2010 in Shanghai, is a native of Shanghai who has resided in the USA for many years.
His specialty is mountain and water scenes, often painting large, expansive murals that capture the essence and power of the oceans and mountain rivers; which have gained a large and enthusiastic following both here and abroad.
Some examples of Mr Xu’s beautiful paintings are included here.
For more information about Mr Xu and his artworks, please contact DDA’s Rose Oliver.
Mountain Waterfall Scene
Following a delicious dinner at their home, Mr. Xu began to demonstrate his painting prowess, painting a scene of a bamboo forest in inks.
Rose captured the whole painting process on camera, posing questions as Mr. Xu began by painting the leaves of the bamboo, followed by the stalks and bamboo trunks, adding the early young shoots of new growth and forest floor before finishing the art work with a short poem and dedicating the painting to Rose.
Mr. Xu commented that before beginning his paintings, he has a clear mental image of the final, finished work. He explained that although on this occasion he began with the bamboo leaves, the artist can begin with the trunks or other images first, it’s up to the individual artist.
He said that as an aspiring artist, first beginning his studies, his teachers had a variety of different pieces of advice as to how to develop his techniques.
Some teachers advocated first copying the teacher’s own techniques and trying to replicate the same results, others advised going out and studying nature, analyzing how the natural plants grew and twisted around each other and how the knots and stalks appear, the spaces between them, how when the wind blows the leaves sway and the appearance of windswept foliage.
After studying nature, the student artist would again be advised to spend many, many hours reproducing the same views and images seen in nature on paper.
Mr. Xu commented that to reach a level where it appears the artist just makes a few “swishes and dots” on the paper to manifest a lifelike scene, required years of refining and honing one’s skills and spending time developing one’s own style and look.
Rather like the martial artist who practices 10,000 repetitions of their form, the artist must spend the same time painting and practicing until the result appears natural and effortless.
He said nowadays many budding young artists are not keen to spend this amount of “gongfu” or time and effort to lay the foundations of their techniques and skills, but without it one cannot truly foster this expertise.
It was really a delight to watch a master at work and witness the blank canvas slowly come to life, filling and building into a beautiful work of art.
Thank you to Mr. Xu and his family for their generosity, it was a wonderful and unique experience and one that we will always treasure.
Rose will be interviewing Mr. Xu in more depth at a later date, also asking Mr. Xu to offer advice to other artists keen to develop their skills and techniques.
DDA’s Rose Oliver and Wang Ming Bo recently interviewed internationally renowned artist Mr. Xu Zhi Wen for an English art magazine.
Mr. Xu talked about the origins and history of Chinese art and the principles applied in ink and water painting, as well some of the techniques used to build up the depth and colour and feeling of Yin and Yang within the painting.
He also treated us to a demonstration of how to create and develop a painting, from the initial sketch to the slow progression of the development of the background and features.
The scene of a solitary fisherman, returning from a night of fishing, slowly strolling back across the waterways, captured the imagination and was an extremely fine example of traditional Chinese art at its finest.
Thank you to Mr. Xu and his wife for their hospitality and generosity.
Lu Qiwei
Lu Qiwei started learning Chinese calligraphy, traditional water colour painting, stone sculpting and western art at a young age, and later studied Tai Chi. The artist’s works are a visual display of the feelings from his life. His artworks have been collected and displayed by China Culture and Art Board, China Art Research Center, China Board of Literature and World Chinese Calligraphy Collection. His name has been included in Who’s Who.
His artworks were exhibited in Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Belgium, Holland, France, Australia, United States and Mainland China, and he hosted his first solo exhibition in Shanghai Theater Academy in 2006. Some of the artist’s works have also been collected by world organizations such as Soong Ching Ling Memorial Hall and Lu Xun Memorial Hall in Shanghai.