2024 Hotspot Recommended Artist: Jiang Liang

Sketching one: canvas oil painting 50x60cm2022

Creating should prioritize subjective expression

——Dialogue artist Jiang Liang

ART CLICK: Can Teacher Jiang talk about your artistic experience?

Jiang Liang: Well, actually there's nothing to talk about. In 1984, when I was preparing to take the art college entrance exam, I first got into an official media company to do graphic design. In 1991, he went to Shenzhen to start advertising design and returned to Chongqing in 1994 to do interior decoration design. During this period, there was actually very little painting, and the main focus was on design. I only began to consciously create photography in 2005. After purchasing large format photography equipment in 2008, I began to seriously consider photography topics. By 2011, I had taken multiple series of photography works and participated in exhibitions and won awards both domestically and internationally

Sketching II canvas oil painting 60x50cm2022

Sketching III Oil Painting on canvas 50x60cm2022

Sketching Part Four Oil Painting on canvas 50x60cm2023

ART CLICK: Ten years ago, we collaborated on your photography work. However, in recent years, you suddenly paused your photography creation and devoted yourself wholeheartedly to easel painting. Can you talk about the reasons for choosing easel painting?

Jiang Liang: In 2011, I felt that my photography creative ideas had encountered a bottleneck, so I decided to let go of photography for a while and then picked up my paintbrush again to find the connection between the two, exploring whether painting can strengthen the shortcomings or deepen my photography works. This was my initial idea to start painting again, but to my surprise, this painting lasted for 12 years. Nowadays, painting has become an important part of my life, and my research and reflection on painting is no less than that of photography in the past.

Sketching of Life: Oil Painting on canvas 50x60cm2023

Sketching Six canvas oil painting 40x30cm2023

Sketching Seven Oil Painting on canvas 50x60cm2023

ART CLICK: Although painting and photography belong to two different forms of art, the key is that the essence of art is a carrier of ideas and spirits, and a medium for outputting values. Do you think what you gain and pay attention to in the fields of painting and photography?

Jiang Liang: In the past, I used to think that photography and painting were two different forms of art. I agree that they are both media for outputting values and expressing thinking results. Cameras are no longer tools for documentary work, and photos and paintings belong to the same category of art (image art). The difference between the two is that the results of modern industrial and technological development are combined with subjective thinking to create an image; The other is the combination of manual techniques and subjective thinking to create images.

Sketching: Eight canvas oil paintings 60x50cm2023

Sketching Nine canvas oil painting 80x50cm2023

Sketching of Life: Ten canvas oil paintings 50x80cm2023

ART CLICK: In the initial stage of painting creation, do you have any tendencies in choosing themes?

Jiang Liang: Returning to painting 12 years ago was for a continuation of my photography that was not fully expressed, all about history. I will enlarge a very small object in a photo many times and present it in the form of an oil painting.

Sketching Eleven Oil Painting on canvas 60x50cm2023

Twelve canvas oil paintings of sketching 60x50cm2023

ART CLICK: I have seen many of your life painting works, most of which are about streets, houses, etc. These seem to be related to some kind of memory and emotions, right?

Jiang Liang: Yes, it's related to memory and emotions. It is also consistent with the focus of my previous photography works.

Sketching 13 canvas oil painting 50x80cm2023

Sketching 14: Oil Painting on canvas 50x80cm2023

ART CLICK: In the process of landscape sketching, color is one of the main means of expression. The emotions contained in oil paintings are mainly expressed through color. How did Teacher Jiang handle color when creating?

Jiang Liang: Emotions, emotions, observation, and cognition.

Sketching 15 canvas oil painting 50x80cm2023

Sketching: Sixteen canvas oil paintings 50x60cm2023

ART CLICK: How did you balance the new ideas that emerged during the creative process?

Jiang Liang: Put subjective expression first.

Sketching 17 canvas oil painting 50x80cm2023

ART CLICK: Have any artists inspired you in your painting creations over the years?

Jiang Liang: Yes, Professor friends from Chuanmei, especially my old friend Professor Liang Yijun.

Sketching 18 canvas oil painting 50x60cm2023

ART CLICK: How do you view the scenery of reality? How can it become the non empty and meaningful forms in the works of art that we see?

Jiang Liang: Realistic scenery is an objective object, and most of it has its own meaning, both in form and connotation. Through painting, it only makes it more meaningful.

Jiang Liang JIANG LIAN

Born in Chongqing in 1964.

Member of Chongqing Oil Painting Society, Royal Society of Photography, American Professional Photographers Association, Chairman of Chongqing Yudong Branch of Sketching China, and Member of Fuling District Artists Association

Exhibitions: First PPA International Photography Competition Art (Bronze Award), First Sino British Cultural Exchange Exhibition, 36th French Art Exhibition, 16th and 17th Los Angeles Art Expo, 2014 Shanghai Art Image Exhibition of the World Photography Organization, Contemporary Image Exhibition of China, Japan and South Korea, 2012 Seoul Contemporary Image Exhibition, China South Korea Cultural Exchange Exhibition, Pingyao International Photography Exhibition, Lianzhou International Photography Exhibition, 1st and 2nd Chongqing Yangtze River International Photography Exhibition.

Painting exhibitions: The first and second Chongqing Small Oil Painting Exhibitions, as well as the Chongqing 4+4 and 5+5 Sketching Oil Painting Exhibitions.

Works magazine includes publications such as "Art Observation", "Oriental Art", "Chinese Contemporary Art Literature", "Art Impressions", "Art Collection", "New Vision", "Micro Art", "Phoenix Life", "Global Life", "Gallery", "Chongqing Literature and Art", etc.