——The pursuit of painter Li Baofeng for more than forty years

Li Baofeng (modern) was born in 1938. People from Liaoning. Good at Chinese painting. Gansu People's Publishing House. In 1955, he was admitted to the High School Affiliated to Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts. In 1959, he was promoted to the Chinese Painting Department of Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts. In 1964, he graduated from the Chinese Painting Department of Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts. In the same year, he was assigned to Gansu People's Publishing House and served as director of the art editing office. In 1990, he was transferred to Gansu Painting Academy and served as vice president, first-class artist, and vice chairman of Gansu Artists Association. Retired in 2001. He has successively served as vice president of Gansu Painting Academy, first-class artist, and vice chairman of Gansu Artists Association.

In 1964, Li Baofeng, who came from Fushun in Northeast China, completed nine years of study at the Affiliated High School and undergraduate school in Lumei, and was assigned to work in Gansu after graduation. So far, he has worked hard on the land in the northwest of his motherland for 46 spring and autumn years, and has gained a fruitful harvest. His paintings show the natural scenery and historical charm of the northwest, and at the same time contain humanistic feelings and personality of pen and ink. They demonstrate Li Baofeng's decades of artistic pursuit and are his most comprehensive report to the Chinese painting world and the general audience.

Li Baofeng is well-known in the painting world for his figure paintings and belongs to the second generation of figure painters in New China. In fact, his artistic achievements are multifaceted. He not only has a solid foundation in modeling, but also has many years of experience working in a publishing house and drawing numerous illustrations and comic strips. His dictation skills, composition skills, and the ability to use pen and ink lines to outline the dynamics of characters and depict their expressions, honed in long-term practice, are of great help to his creation of Chinese paintings, especially figure paintings. Wang Shenglie, his teacher during the Lu Mei period, had always paid attention to Li Baofeng and once wrote an article praising him for "the ability to write about figures, flowers, birds, landscapes, and animals with ease, which is incomparable to those who have practiced one or two tricks." His "strength lies in his solid modeling ability." ". Li Baofeng was also fortunate to meet Huang Zhou, a figure painter who was thirteen or fourteen years older than him, many times. Huang Zhou admired this junior's spirituality and intelligence, treated each other with sincerity and peace, and was sincere and good at tempting, which benefited him a lot. Li Baofeng later said many times that the two seniors who had the most profound influence on his artistic journey were Wang Shenglie and Huang Zhou.

In Li Baofeng’s decades of artistic journey, there is clearly a spiritual main line of realism running through it. The vastness of the plateau, the land of Longyuan, and the magical land of the Northwest nurtured Li Baofeng's artistic spirit. For decades, he has persistently adhered to the creative direction of being in-depth with life and close to reality, and has a deep love for the western land. Li Baofeng has repeatedly emphasized: "It is important to observe and experience life. I often do this to draw my own true experience." Behind each of his works, there is countless hard work and sweat. In order to paint a good picture of the humanities and customs of the Tibetan plateau, he insists on going to Tibetan areas every year to experience life at the grassroots level. From the Tibetan areas in southern Gansu and the Hexi Corridor to southern and northern Xinjiang, he left traces of his sketching experience, thus accumulating a large number of image materials about life and characters in the west. In the land of Northwest China, Li Baofeng dug a deep well of life. He has an inexhaustible and living source of art. Get creative inspiration from life, and think about character modeling and pen and ink language based on the subject matter and content. The works created in this way not only have a strong flavor of western life, but also have vivid and flexible personality characteristics. He has created a series of works over the years such as "Love on the Plateau", "Years", "Foothills of Muztag Peak", "Bazatu", "Flower Rain on the Silk Road", "Northwest Wind" and "Pipa Play", all of which have left a deep impression on viewers. .

The language of pen and ink is of particularly important significance to Chinese painting. Here, Li Baofeng has his own unique insights and unique applications. He pays attention to the compatibility between the north and the south, pays attention to the application of traditional methods, and also learns from the West and young painters, and is eclectic in his learning. In order to master the basic skills of pen and ink, he studied calligraphy for many years. In the 1960s, he even tried to use pen and ink to write oil paintings, boldly exploring the possibility of grafting traditional pen and ink with light and shadow modeling methods. In his early years, he liked to use side strokes when painting, his brushstrokes were agile and his lines were easy to change. However, in long-term practice, he gradually realized that the light brushwork lacked connotation and strength, and it was difficult to accurately express the regional characteristics and spiritual connotation of western life. Later, he mostly used center forward, or a mixture of center forward and winger. The strokes of the pen are transferred to each other, and the calmness and heaviness are not forgotten in the changes. In the combination of ink colors and dots and lines, great emphasis is placed on the rhythm of weight and density.

The characters in his paintings are sometimes even outlined with dry and hard brushstrokes, while the clothing patterns are instead outlined with light and smooth lines. The unexpected juxtaposition of the strong autumn wind and the moist spring rain makes people feel that there is a spirit of freshness and freshness in the simplicity.

Li Baofeng has been tirelessly pursuing for more than 40 years to dig a deep well of life in the western land. A series of works he created have strong western characteristics and a distinct flavor of the times. In terms of the use of pen and ink and visual language, it also reflects many valuable individual characteristics. Because it is profound, it is moving. This kind of artistic creation will be heartily welcomed by people! (The author is deputy director, researcher, and doctoral supervisor of the National Art Museum of China)