bao lede's new paintings

In Bao’s landscape works, there are ink traditions and something new as well, they are about what he feels in nature, not what he sees. Everything goes through his mind, the mountain can be gray or blue, woods can be purple or orange. Chinese art has its tradition of landscape, which is not realistic or impressionistic but ideogrammatic.

The landscape is an enchanted mixture of individual emotion, energy, and present-day culture, reflecting Bao’s Chinese background and his life in the western world. Kongling , an idealized expression of spirit and aesthetics, is the realm of all traditional ink landscapes, which is revealed in uninhabited mountains and serene water. As oil color is laid by palette knife and big brush onto those ink strokes and textured layers of rice paper, Bao adds his modern life and sense of western culture to the old tradition. It becomes an individual and personal style in which Kongling can be expressively articulated with bright color; idealized lofty aesthetics can be uttered in total human emotion and energy. Bao’s landscape is a modern expression of old Chinese tradition, a unique mixture of west and east.

Bao has experimented with mixed media for more than 30 years. The gentle, magical and delicate transformation of ink on rice paper quietly emerges on the canvas, and also strong ink stroke like calligraphy brushed on canvas, this is his eastern way of expression. Within them are those expressive, textured gestures of bold, pure color strokes, and also textured palette knife stroke, this is his western way of expression. Now he often paints without ink and rice paper, with oil, he still creates the same effect of powerful mixture of ink and oil, east and west, the unique and only style in this world.