It was only after reaching a certain level of
mastery with her peonies that Bao Rong began to engage in bolder experimentation. One is only free to dabble with
variations after mastering the original theme, she explains. It is her hope to integrate more
techniques from Western watercolor painting into her Chinese style but admits
the difficulty of this. “Guohua,
watercolor, oil painting… In a
person’s lifetime she can only learn one of these well. If someone can study two styles or media
and perfect both of them, well that’s a genius. …I’ve been painting for
forty years and published eight books.
I’m still not sure what is right and what isn’t. So at some point you have to go with your
gut feeling. You finish the piece,
you hang it up and you see if it makes you feel good.”
At sixty-five, the artist couldn’t be more
passionate in her daily quest for new challenges. When asked the secret of her success, Bao Rong, artist and teacher,
offers a modest reply: “There’s nothing more to it than hard work.” One need only behold one of her
mural-sized peony masterpieces, or
delight in the bonhomie of her morning classes to be sure that there is
much more to it than that.
潑墨山水
