Oil on canvas

60 x 72 cm.23 5/8 x 28 3/8 in.

Signed in Chinese and dated 98 on lower right

LITERATURE Soka Art Center，Taipei，Metaphor of Landscape：Hong Ling’s Oil Painting，March 2003，P28

EXHIBITED Taipei，National Dr. Sun Yat-san Memorial Hall，Metaphor of Landscape，2003.

Hong Ling b. 1955

The most prominent features of the painting style from Hong Ling’s maturity period are the smooth and overlapping color blocks，intense color points，and the beautiful landscape image interwoven by short brushes approaching the points. The wrinkling approach using ink spots with lines in traditional landscape painting is appreciated by literati painters，who value the aesthetics of calligraphic lines and their intervals. This approach was used to present tree bushes at background or mottled moss brushes at foreground from the early days and have gradually evolved into ink points with independent existence. The size，speed，weight，thickness，and dryness vary in producing visual focus for the landscape in the paintings and thereby strengthened the abstract aesthetics of landscape painting. It was until the Qing Dynasty，stain-like ink points were used by Shitao to constitute the aesthetics of the entire painting. Such “points” pursuing implications rather than forms have contributed to construct a new state of art.

Hong Ling employ the “points” in traditional Chinese paintings as a fundamental element for presentation，where the images formed by rubbing and overlapping express the feelings rather than objects in the mind of artists. In his work，Foggy Autumn Melody，the intense short brushes reproduced the autumn view turning from yellow to red color，supported by a large clear lake with a crystal clear sensation. A remote look of the painting reminds us of Fan Kuan’s painting “the Snow Forest” from the Northern Song Dynasty，where the uprising temperament is incredibly vivid. The painting “Hub in the Snow” shows sporadic brush points that resemble the snowflakes falling from the sky and floating on the trees，settling on the center of the thick and rustled yard that inspire people to live in the mountain. The fallen and mottled “Fairy World” seems to hide within that people yarn for.

Hong Ling is inspired by nature and employs traditional Chinese painting as innovative blueprint to modernize the existing Chinese painting traditions，demonstrating strong momentum in terms of creativity in modern arts，and thereby creating a new direction for traditional paintings to develop toward modernization.

Price estimate:
HKD：200,000 - 300,000
USD：25,800 - 38,700

Auction Result:
HKD : 236,000