Nandu News reporter Xie XiangnanOn the afternoon of March 2nd, "No or No: Wang Weihua's Watercolor Exhibition" was held at the Art Space on the 20th floor of Block C, Wanxia Center, Houhaibin Road, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, and the exhibition showcased more than 110 watercolor works created by artist Wang Weihua in recent years. This exhibition is Wang Weihua's first solo exhibition, which fully demonstrates the artistic exploration of an art educator in Shenzhen after retirement. The exhibition will run until March 30.
Nandu reporters learned at the exhibition site that Wang Weihua is an art teacher, a member of the Guangdong Artists Association, and a member of the AWS American Watercolor Painting Association. After her retirement, she returned to the brush, and in recent years, her creative enthusiasm has reached a climax, exploring and trying on the road of art, and at the age of 60, she held her first solo exhibition.
Talking about her own creative experience, Wang Weihua introduced, "In 1986, I won the first place in Anhui Province and was admitted to the oil painting major of the Art Department of East China Normal University in Shanghai from Bengbu, a small city in northern Anhui. After graduating, she worked as an art teacher at a university and middle school for 28 years. In addition to teaching, he devoted himself to running the family, taking care of and accompanying his daughter, thus interrupting the artistic creation he once loved. Ten years ago, my daughter went to the University of Pennsylvania to continue her education, and I retired soon after. When I looked around at the suddenly empty home and touched the empty atrium in a daze, I began to re-examine myself: in the past twenty years, I can't seem to find any traces of myself in my life, the unique Wang Weihua who is not labeled as a mother and wife? There is something awakened in my heart, and that is the love of art hidden by the dust of fireworks. It's time to find myself again! I finally picked up the brush! ”
Wang Weihua said, "At the beginning, I started with traditional watercolor painting, and in the first two years, I mainly sketched landscape flowers. The process of picking up the brush is quite difficult and even arduous, sometimes confused, sometimes excited, sometimes anxious, and sometimes questioning yourself. But the courage to regain my love supported me and spurred me on, and as I painted, my former love for art and self-confidence was slowly regained, and my heart became stronger and more peaceful. Then I started to create watercolor figure paintings, and I was attracted to the masters of the modernist period, and I began to study the paintings of the modernist period attentively. From Fauvism to Cubism, from Constructivism to Bauhaus, from Attain to Surrealism, from German Expressionism to American Abstract Expressionism, I have absorbed different styles of artistic nourishment and applied them to my watercolor creations. From my works, we can see that I have been trying and trying, seeking change, generating new inspiration in change, reinventing myself in learning and changing, and reshaping the appearance of my works. ”
Wang Weihua's dedication and love for art have also infected her friends, and Wu Xiaoli, the curator of this exhibition, is one of them. Wu Xiaoli introduced at the opening ceremony of the exhibition that the title of the exhibition "Stop No" is based on the combing and thinking of Wang Weihua's artistic creation experience. "Wei Hua has been teaching and educating people for more than 20 years, and she has interrupted her artistic creation, but her love for art has never stopped, and the improvement of artistic literacy has never stopped. Although she stopped writing, she loved it more than once. After returning to the brush in her fifties, Weihua faced many challenges. One of these was the shift in subject matter, and she chose to abandon the familiar oil painting in favor of watercolor. Compared with oil painting, watercolor has a smaller audience and is more difficult to use. However, Weihua insisted on choosing watercolor as a medium of expression, and gradually formed her own painting language style. ”
Wu Xiaoli believes that Wang Weihua's creations have a clear time context, and we can see her continuous innovation and progress in materials, techniques and styles from her works in different periods. Her artistic journey ranged from watercolor to exploring and absorbing the techniques of modernist masters, and daring to experiment with various styles such as cubism and fauvism. Through continuous exploration and practice, her works range from traditional to abstract, both mature and innovative. In the past year, Wei Hua has been obsessed with the creation of watercolor figure paintings, and her works have integrated her own emotional expression, using concise, hazy and flat language to express contemporary women, providing the audience with a new perspective to experience the world of women.
Wang Weihua's creation has been affirmed by the Shenzhen art community. Zhang Xiaogang, a famous watercolor painter in Shenzhen, said that Wang Weihua has a very open creative mentality, very good at absorbing artistic oxygen, in recent years she has grasped the direction of her own progress, her works show the vitality of youth, has formed her own unique watercolor language, very rare.
Yang Xiaoyang, deputy director of the Shenzhen Public Culture and Art Creation Center (Shenzhen Fine Art Academy), believes that Wang Weihua's works show the unique gentleness and delicacy of female artists, and her performance of women not only captures the beauty of women's form, but also goes deep into the heart, showing the spiritual beauty of urban women's personality.