Amid Chinese contemporary artists, Du Hua is a female artist active in exploration and enterprising in work. During her decades of artistic career, based on the tradition of national art, she has learned of western art with an open attitude, broken the restrictions of painting genres to make innovative attempts with various materials and methods, calmly shuttled among various painting genres, materials and skills, formed her own unique artistic style and made her own contribution to build Chinese modern painting art. Du has made extensive explorations and practices in traditional Chinese painting, oil painting, sculptures, decoration art, comprehensive materials, instruments, photography and other aspects, and obtained impressive achievements. It is rarely seen in Chinese artistic circles.

　　Du's artistic practice continues the tradition of Chinese modern painting in the 20th century with Lin Fengmian as the representative. Especially, in the field of modern water-ink painting, she has rolled out active exploration in colors, structures, brush and ink application skills, and received many valuable methods and fruits. Since the 1980s, modern water-ink painting has been fairly outstanding in Chinese modern art field. Actually in early 20th century, Lin Fengmian and his contemporaries had started the exploration. Du's modern water-ink works are an embodiment of Chinese artists' unremitting efforts in seeking new consciousness, concepts, layout structures and color skills from Chinese and western arts. Modern water-in artists express the  innermost feelings through the selection and recombination of colors, materials or patterns, and deem water-ink and color as expression media instead of technical criteria. Du's artistic characteristics can be summarized with "brilliance and colorfulness", which means she attaches great attention and unique creation to color application. Du's colorful ink art continued the colorization path carved out by Wu Changshuo, Qi Baishi and Zhang Daqian in early 20th century. She regards color as the core resource of her art creation in development, and makes further progress in combining Chinese and western art. The ancient saying "sufficient connotation beyond laborious color expression" does not dispel color, but refers to the proper use of color application, i.e. both color and water-ink should obey the expression of spiritual concept. "Spirit is the most difficult to be delineated in paintings." In this aspect, color and water-ink are of the same meaning. Obviously, the attitude to colors and materials is understood from not only technology but also spirit.

　　In Du's works, the space consciousness and structure concept have been changing. On one hand, the complanation trend is gradually intensified, together with the intensification of related decoration and colorization trends. On the other hand, diversified space expression modes form abundant picture planes. It has both malposition and non-logicality of visual space, and the subjective emotional space and tangible feeling space. Thus, the value of Du's art is established. Through the combination of elements for painting including brush, ink, paper, water and color, she sensitively conveys the abundant innermost emotion.

　　As a pioneer in the reformation of Chinese modern water-ink painting in the 20th century, Lin Fengmian, in his paper Future of Eastern and Western Arts, incisively pointed out, "to express the mode echoing with the atmosphere of the times, artists must start from the expression form". It is just the cut-in point of western modern art in the 20th century. Since the times of impressionism, modernistic art genres have achieved the sensitive expression to modern society through revolution of art forms. In the early period of the 20th century, Lin Fengmian hadn't definitely brought forward the concepts of materials and media. But his art experiment was no longer restricted to Chinese water-ink tradition. Instead, he took the road of integrating Chinese and western arts, and applied art forms(e.g. composition, brushing and color etc.)  different from those of traditional Chinese paintings. Lin Fengmian's art thought and practice produced profound significance for Chinese modern water-ink painting in late 20th century.

　　Lin Fengmian's art thought directly influenced his student Zhao Wuji. In 1948, Zhao Wuji went to Paris and made joint efforts with Zhu Dequn there to push forward the integration of Chinese and western arts advocated by Lin Fengmian in the aspect of the abstract rhythm of oil paintings and the profoundity of Chinese landscape paintings. During the development of Chinese modern water-ink painting in late 20th century, Wu Guanzhong, Liu Guosong and Huang Yongyu's innovation and advocacy in forms, materials and colors are the expansion of the Chinese painting reformation pioneered by Lin Fengmian. Wu Guanzhong stressed the beautifulness in form and abstractness of paintings. Liu Guosong accessed a more magnificent universal space with a start from materials. Huang Yongyu developed the sharp contrast of colors to the utmost. In Du Hua's works, we may realize her active exploration in forms, materials and colors. We may say that the combination of expression forms of art with the subjective emotions of artists is just the quintessence of Chinese traditional painting. Traditional artists stressed on the expression of subjective mood and neglected the structures of natural bodies and forms in freehand water-ink paintings. And traditional elaborate-style painting had an excessive focus on the situational and moral delineation of the objects, but ignored the expression of the artist's nature.

　　The so-called expression of the artist's nature refers to emphasis on the true expression of artist's nature. It is the core value of modern art. If the artist's nature cannot be truly expressed, how will the audience be moved? Base on the extensive study on foreign art through her visits to Europe and America, Du Hua has established a view of grand culture and a concept of modern art. She believes that the supreme realm of painting has been the expression of thought and the consolation to life. The expression of such self-life consciousness is just the "cultural heart", i.e. The cultural connotation and spiritual pursuance of modern water-ink paintings, of an intellectual artist. Shouldering the responsibility of the expressing spirit, psychological status and aesthetic tastes of contemporaries, Du insists on that modern water-ink painting should seek the growth point of language resource and style from excellent Chinese and foreign tradition and take the road of "integration of Chinese and foreign arts". No doubt, Du has borrowed many valuables from western art, such as structure, color and texture etc. But, the problem Du intends to discuss is the self-sufficiency of art language, i.e. how language links with realistic life, temperament and individuals through its expression mode, thus creating psychological linkage with underlying Chinese culture.

　　Du's art road starts from Chinese elaborate-style painting, especially the flower-bird paintings of the Song Dynasty. Du started the copying and sketching of the Song Dynasty's flower-bird paintings in 1976. Different from those copying of the free-hand water-ink paintings of the Ming and Qing dynasties, Du, from the Song paints, not only obtained the careful observation and subtle expression, improved ability in realistical painting, but also acquired the direct understanding to the realistic life. The study on the Song paintings contributes to Du's whole career in the aspect of not only themes but also concerns on life. The love to nature and life becomes the main theme of Du's painting later on, and endows her works with elegance. Thus, the  free-hand water-ink paintings accessed based on these will not be vague and general. Du's works embody the trend that modern Chinese elaborate-style painting is seeking changes. She does not deem Chinese elaborate-style painting as a closed system. Instead, she broadens her view to look for a comprehensively innovation road. Du's elaborate-style paintings should be interpreted from the view angle of modern urban life. To people in modern urban life, her work is both the release and relaxation to alleviate their tension and anxiety, and the soul land to guide individual's emotion back to the nature.

　　In the 20th century, Chinese painting has three noticeable development lines. The first line is the ancient tradition of Chinese elaborate-style painting, including academic elaborate-style painting, ancient mural painting and folk painting. Academic elaborate-style painting embodies not only the imperial taste but also the elite taste of professional artists. Ancient mural painting and folk painting works, mainly created by folk experts and masters, are generally consistent with the academic elaborate-style paintings in the dependence on Chinese traditional culture. The second line is the adaptable modification to traditional Chinese painting when missionary artist Giuseppe Castiglione entered the court in the period under the reign of Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty. That is the so-called new elaborate-style painting based on "integration of Chinese and western arts". The third line is that the oil painting artists returned from overseas countries in early 20th century brought western realism education into Chinese fine art education. They opened sketching, perspective, dissection, dissection and other courses in Chinese Painting Department, which produced far-reaching influence to the development of modern Chinese painting. The sketching and shape-focused fine art education genre with Xu Beihong and Jiang Zhaohe as representatives made color-ink paintings actively reflecting social reality mainstream works in modern Chinese painting creation.

　　Du is quite familiar with the development line of Chinese painting mentioned above. Although she received systematic education in fine art school, her works are not limited to realistic representation. Instead, she focuses on traditional art and folk art, which are two kinds of art languages featuring free and vivid expression. Du's works show that she has a good understanding of folk art and even African art and has integrated some elements of these kinds of art into her works. We can see from the modern art innovation of Picasso that the African art, especially the art of African wood sculptures, served as the start of Picasso's steps toward cubism. The works of Du, especially the decorative works and sculptures, show obvious traces of these folk art and African art. For example, her decorative wood sculptures contain the elements of traditional Chinese wood sculptures, including the themes of "Richer and Richer", "Smooth Sailing", "Three Rams Bring Bliss" and other auspicious themes, which are all traditional themes boasting vivid expression and showing interesting life. Meanwhile, these works deliver strong modern sense of form. Her works created in 1993, namely the Series of Stone Bearing Carved Portraits of Han Dynasty, resume the cubist expression, hard edge and line carving in plane space, which are special characteristics of traditional sculpture art. This is very inspiring for the painting circle in Shandong, where there are rich resources of painting art of Han Dynasty.

　　By absorbing and integrating traditional academic paintings and folk art, Du has made a series of creative explorations in a wide range of fields. For example, she explored the penetration of traditional Chinese realistic painting and freehand Chinese ink painting to each other, and integrated the rendering function of Chinese ink and the freehand lines into the realistic painting. In the 1990s, Du became aware of the application of abstract colors in painting. She drew white lotus amid dim moonlight. That's the Dream Series and Flowers in Dream, which present fascinating dreamland with flowers in mist. Du also made explorations in how to introduce the lines in the Chinese paintings into the freehand Chinese ink painting. For example, her works named Cool World (1997) and Fragrance from Lotus Pool (1999) highlight the pure white lotus with deep and serene colors and integrate the colors with the Chinese ink by the movement of lines. Most of the works of Du are based on lines and embodied by colors. The lines and colors together create a kind of mystery. Here is a representative work named White Lotus Waving with Ripples (2010). Her works generally show the characteristics of freehand brushworks by scholars, usually without restrictions. However, many details are expressed vividly and combined with well-organized lines and rhythm of colors, while the final value ideal is the mental imagery and artistic conception embraced by the paintings of Chinese scholars.

　　It's worth noting that, in recent years, Du has been engaged in creation of new Chinese ink paintings. The works are still themed on lotus, but they have gone beyond the representation of lotus and lotus pools. Lotus represents a kind of value ideal and serves as a spiritual symbol. The expression has been sublimated to image conception and symbolization. For example, there are the works named Impressionistic Chinese Ink Painting Series (2014) and Water and Clouds Series (2015), which are not just representation of lotus but focus on the relationship between black and white, the relationship between lines and plane, the structure and spatial layout. Take the relationship between black and white for example. There are colors as light as that of cloud and mist, and also those as black as black paint. There are interweaved lines, and also ingenious arrangement for blanks. The layout of points and lines play a dominant role in the painting layout so that the black and white world is full of color imago. In my opinion, the contemporary Chinese painting should try to keep a kind of exquisite and delicate balance between fine brushwork and freehand brushwork, between imagination and reality, between black and white and other colors, and between microcosmic and macroscopic views. Through a series of explorations in recent years, Du not only reserves the original characteristics of paintings about flowers and birds, but also tries to integrate abstract elements into the landscape paintings. She has significantly expanded the prospect of the formal language of Chinese ink paintings, leaving great potential for abstract structure and interesting expression. To sum up, Du aims to subject forms to free expression of the inner world, draw the significance from both abstract expression and representation, make the works interesting by both shape and emotional expression, and show abstract forms and oriental styles.

　　In such an era, when mechanical copies are prevalent, Du represents a kind of spiritual ideal to return to nature and home through her works. She believes that the plants and animals in the nature are living things with spirit. To her, painting is life. It not only means her individual life, but also refers to her communication with nature and her love for the any other living things, such as the flowers, trees and animals. It is a great pleasure in life to obtain clear understanding of something through details and have a pure heart and sublimated personality. I believe that Du's art and thoughts embody the "natural religion" in the traditional Chinese culture, which emphasizes the integration of people and nature and the immortal value of life in nature. We have seen a lot of such expressions in ancient philosophies, poems and painting works. Du has injected her feelings about flowers, birds and nature into her works so that these works become visual expression of her feelings and experience but not just technical and stylized representation.  During the Warring States Period, our ancestors expressed their respect to and praise of all natural things through their art. There were detailed descriptions of all natural things in the descriptive proses and Yuefu poems, which were the most important literary styles in the Han Dynasty. Qu Yuan, a great poet of Chu State, established a symbolic system (known as the Fragrant Herb and Beautiful Lady symbolic system) in his well-known work Lisao, doing a pioneering job in the Chinese literature. Some descriptions about flowers and birds under the system are still studies by many literature historians and biologists. For tens of years, Du has been engaged in painting flowers and birds. This is because of her pure and simple instinct and also her philanthropism and generosity. This makes her works abstract in a natural way. It is just like Zen. Facing the natural things, individual feelings is instantly extended to the core of life and nature for integration. The heart is open to receive the revelations from nature. Especially, with great enthusiasm for lotus and continuous art creation, Du inherits the tradition for lotus representation in the traditional Chinese literature and art. This is because, although lotus is not one of the four plants (including plum blossoms, orchid, bamboo and chrysanthemum) that are favorite themes in the works of scholars in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, it has possessed a high status since the introduction of the Buddhism doctrines to China in the Han Dynasty. In addition, the folk auspicious symbol system of China also has an extensive mass basis. Therefore, Du's paintings are not just exact representation of daily objects but works indicating the reflections and sentiments of the artist about individual lives. Just as the ancients said, "One Flower is a World". It reflects the state of life in the world.

　　Nowadays, the Chinese painting also has a very significant value, which is to slow down the pace of life in such a fickle world, to cultivate our mind and to rethink about the circumstances surrounding the modern people. What's the modern information delivered by the contemporary Chinese paintings? I believe that, different from many paintings that pursue for magnificence and splendidness, Du's paintings express the feelings of the modern people and reflect the persistence and vitality of life. Just like the delicate paintings of Qi Baishi, these works give vivid expression of the movements as well as the harmonious colors of the plants and insects. They are different from the ancient realistic painting, which used metaphors and personification based on flowers and birds. They express scenes and mindsets that cannot be found in the splendid and laudatory flower and bird paintings created after the founding of the new China. To sum up, a contemporary painter can never become a modern romantic painter until he or she becomes able to naturally express the complicated individual feelings about life and modern society through the visually attractive works and express the subjective emotions in a subtle and implicit way.

　　The romantic colors embodied in Du Hua's paintings came from not only her global perspective as she has visited European countries and took a large number of splendid photos at the South Pole, but from her love for life, enthusiasm in arts and her philosophical attitude toward life. Charles Baudelaire, a renowned poet of France, had defined romanticism in this way, "Properly speaking romanticism lies neither in the subjects that an artist chooses nor in his exact copying of truth, but in the way he feels.... romanticism consists, not in technical perfection, but in a view of art, analogous to the moral attitudes of the age...." Therefore, "Romanticism and modern art are one and the same thing, in other words: intimacy, spirituality, colour, yearning for the infinite, expressed by all the means the arts possess." (Charles Baudelaire: The Salon of 1846 - Selected Writings on Art & Artists of Baudelaire, translated by Guo Hong'an, Guangxi Normal University Press, 2002.)

　　Take the works on lotus for example, which is the most favorite theme of Du Hua and what she is best at. Du is not only skilled at using ink, but better at dealing with the relations between ink and colors, while improving the use of water in the splash-ink technique and making the richness of ink colors a way of emotional expression. Just like what out ancestors said, "the highest good is like water." Water is the base for the image to have lively spirit and charms and emancipates contingency in the ink use with brush. Therefore we can see Du's proficiency in harmonizing the relations between water and ink. From her recent ink lotus works, we can see that some parts of the works have reached the structural maximum tension and the fringe of concretization and abstraction, and the skilled arrangement of points and lines and sturdy strokes leave vigorous undercurrents on the paintings. It is no secret that the creation of ink and wash painting, especially the freehand brushwork, is of highly difficulty and not all works can reach the ideal state and it is inevitable to have some defects. For Du Hua, the creation of the super-large ink and wash painting scroll is of high experimental and has rooms to make improvements. But in my opinion, Du has a broad development space in the ink and wash painting field. At present she has reached the realm of lyrical expression. Whether she will reach the realm of abstract ink painting is depended on her internal spiritual needs and self-disciplined development of artistic language and she just needs to follow the natural tendency. In fact, she has explored abstract painting in a series of works with comprehensive materials and tempera works in around 2008 and integrated the abstraction exploration in the Impressionistic Chinese Ink Painting Series and Imagistic Landscape Series. However, I understand and support Du to make bold changes and innovation in the artistic exploration and not be constrained by the well-known styles and worldly success which is common to see in the modern Chinese painting circle.

　　Du has also created some fan paintings. Compared with the large paintings, these fan paintings show more freedom in creation. There are quite many exquisite hand scrolls, albums and fan paintings in the traditional and collection systems of Chinese painting, which have been highly valued by historians and collectors and a common painting form used by ancient artists of China. Different from the frescoes in the large temples and monasteries, this kind of paintings, easy to carry and keep, has more relaxed themes and artistic languages and can reflect the artists' free creative spirits. In history such works were normally exchanged and appreciated by the intellectuals and artists. In ancient times in China, the hand scrolls, albums and fan paintings created on Xuan paper were once a form of art favored by the bureaucratic intellectuals and literati and they made such works a daily spiritual enjoyment. Like the Chinese calligraphy and music, it was an artistic appreciation form in the special space and environment and had gradually developed into a high lifestyle pursued by the whole society. Du's fan paintings reflect her deep feelings to the traditional culture and thinking on the modernity, which is "the missing emotion to the tradition and a pursuit to innovation". Under the diversified environment and diversified cultures, Du wishes to master the purity of traditional paintings on the one hand; on the other hand, she attempts to achieve an intensive ink expression language in the representation of natural scenery, figures and flowers and birds so as to pay more attention to the spiritual quality of the Chinese culture in the sense of form and times.

　　When reviewing the history of Chinese painting, we can see that because of the participation of literati and artists since the Tang and Song Dynasties, art has been gradually apart from the realistic and utilitarian goals and "harmony between nature and human beings" has become the ultimate goal of expression of the Chinese arts. With a variety of delicate changing ink and wash painting techniques, artists build a channel of dialogue between souls and the nature without excessive pursuit of external intense formal changes. After 1949 there was a period that Chinese paintings mainly served the realistic political purposes, arts were mainly used for expressing the ideological struggles and solving the intense relationships among peoples, and  artistic language research was neglected. But this situation was greatly changed in the recent 20 years. Chinese artists in modern times emphasized that the creation of paintings should conform with the natural laws and reflect the spiritual status of the creator while expressing the natural scenery, which conforms with the theory that "man is an integral part of nature". It is the core of the traditional culture of China and the artistic ideal pursued by Chinese artists in the 21st century. The oriental aesthetic concepts of "harmony between man and nature" is of profound value for the cultural development in the globalization era.

　　Silvia Tavares Chico, a renowned female critic in Spain, has noticed that "From the 1950s the western artists have looked at the oriental with astonished eyes, but mainly reflected in the selection of eastern writing characters as the subject of extensive exploration in the plastic arts, and unconscious and irrational concerns of super-realism to the oriental calligraphy. Although the oriental is pursued as a very remote image, there is no profound cultural ties established." The profound cultural ties can find a common base of understanding in the globalized age, i.e., the harmonious co-existence between man and nature, which is the precondition for the social sustainable development in the future. Human thinking is mobile and artistic works can open man's soul as a kind of revelation to evaluate the meanings of man in different cultural backgrounds. While the modern media and popular arts are more of formula like praises of the reality, artists are bound to express man's spiritual state as the spokesperson of the social spiritual life. The social division confines people to a narrow place and makes them easily stuck in mediocrity, passiveness and numbness, so are some highly educated people. In the magically developed contradiction structure of the world and the tide of radical changes of social transformation of China, everyone is facing and experiencing choices and tests of physical and spiritual values. Behind the flashy world, what's the meaning of the Chinese painting as a representative of the Chinese culture? Du's works remind us that the visual symbols and colors of modern ink and wash painting art are to evoke our wisdom and emotion to the being world from the virtual to the reality. What arts can make us to expect and affirm is our yearning and ideal for beauty and kindness, which come from our heart and lead us to the future.

　　Yin Shuangxi

　　professor and doctoral

　　tutor of China Central Academy of Fine Arts,

　　member of China Artists Association

　　August 1, 2016