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Chinese Xieyi Painting

Chinese Xieyi Painting is also named Freehand Brushwork and is characterized by vivid expression and bold outline.
Xie means write; Yi means meaning, idea. Xieyi means to express (but with the style of writing as calligraphy, write out the idea or thought in an artist's heart or mind, instead of something they can see with their eyes only). So, to express the thoughts or feelings of human being through painting, and to express the spirit of the natural objects is the core of a Chinese Xieyi Painting.

A simple and summary style, focusing on the spirit of objects to express an artist's feelings directly and freely is the basic character of Chinese Xieyi Painting.
Since the Tang Dynasty (618 A.D.-907   A.D.), Song Dynasty (960 A.D.-1279   A.D.), and Yuan Dynasty (1206 A.D.-1368   A.D.), many painters joined the Xieyi Painting, pushing it the mainstream of Chinese painting.

In the history of Chinese art, many great Xieyi artists also were great writers, poets or thinkers. They had a good education, were very intelligent,had creative minds and high art skills, and with generous mind and rich thoughts, they set out to paint something simple but interesting, with free and quick strokes, to stress the spirit of the objects they painted, while not paying too much attention to the shapes of the objects. Wang Wei (701 A.D.-761   A.D.), Su Shi (1037 A.D.-1101 A.D.), Mi Fu (1051 A.D.-1107   A.D.), Ni Zan(1301 A.D.-1374   A.D.), Dong Qichang (1555 A.D.-1636   A.D.) , Shi Tao (1642 A.D.-1707   A.D.) , Ba Da Shan Ren(1626 A.D.-1705   A.D.), Wu Changshuo (1844 A.D.-1927   A.D.) and Qi Baishi (1864 A.D.-1957   A.D.) are all famous Chinese Xieyi Artists.

Chinese Xieyi usually is painted on special paper that is permeable, called Sheng Xuan. The permeability of the paper can help artists to express their thoughts and feelings freely.

Chinese Xieyi can be divided into Small Xieyi and Big Xieyi. The difference is in the degree of freedom. The latter is much freer.

All the paintings that I painted for the poems in this publication are Chinese Xiyi Paintings.