Vice Researcher, the Administrative Center for China’s Agenda 21

　　Vice Editor-in-Chief, World Science and Technology

　　Li Ying is a professional artist, a graduate of the Arts Department of Capital Normal College, majoring oil painting. We met by chance and her elegance immediately caught my attention. On our trip to Russia, she often told me how to appreciate a painting. One day, we visited the Ekaterina Garden, and I happened to see Li standing by the flower bed and staring at the blossoms in the bed, with an unconscious smile on her face. I was deeply impressed by the scene. Li was surrounded by all kinds of blossoms, and she herself seemed to turn into the graceful peony or the simple but elegant lily. For that moment, the images of all kinds of flowers and Li Ying mixed themselves in my head. I was trying to make a better picture in my mind to describe how I felt about Li. But somehow I thought there was a certain connection between her and flowers. Perhaps it’s because she once told me about her childhood days in the courtyard and the wonderful memories about flowers of all seasons, which has inspired her to use flowers as the subject of many of her paintings.

　　By another chance, I was told that Li opened a new studio nearby my house, and I was invited to pay a visit, which I gladly accepted. In the studio, I saw easels, canvases and other tools for painting, which lied scattered in the room. There were also some stones and colorful stone powder, which puzzled me a lot. Li explained to me that, after graduating from the teaching assistant’s postgraduate program of the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, she took part in and graduated from the China Heavy Mineral Color Painting Program (senior). Now she devotes herself to mineral color painting. But as far as I knew, we could only find mineral pigments on the Dunhuang Murals or some more ancient painted potteries. For me, mineral color paintings seemed to be a symbol of antiquity and associated with memories far away from ours.Did she intend to engage herself in the reproduction and preservation of ancient artworks and give up her pursuit of modern painting? She was busy at that time, so I bid her farewell, with the question still lingering in my head.

　　One day, Li invited me to the China Mineral Color Painting Invitation Exhibition at the China Millennium Monument. I was attracted to Li’s series of works entitled “Flower” and spent a lot of time before them and marveling. In these paintings, I saw the respective distinctive of all the four seasons: the whiteness and pureness of the winter, the colors of the spring, the vitality of summer and the harvest in the winter.

　　This was my first contact with modern mineral color paintings. I was stunned by the gorgeous modern mineral color paintings done by using the pigments which were abstracted from rocks and soil, ground and screened. The visual effect of these mineral color paintings upon the viewers is more than words can describe. I was excited about each and every piece of the works exhibited, with gratitude for Li Ying and other authors of mineral color paintings, who brought new life to the ancient mineral color painting.

　　Later, I paid a second visit to Li’s studio to see some of her latest artworks. She elaborated the creation of mineral color paintings for me. She often went to sketch in the field and collected all kinds of rocks and soil and then chose from them according to the need of artistic creation. The mineral pigment is granular, crystal-like and is fluid after ground into powder. Each plane of it would produce a different effect of light perception after the interaction with the medium agent and the artist’s work on the pigment’s surface. In the artistic creation, Li would choose the mineral pigment carefully and sometimes use some other materials, such as the gold foil, silver foil and colored foil, the combination of which would produce a sense of three dimension and enrich the texture. Li applied different painting skills to the “Flower” series and the works such as “Net”. And she will continue to explore more skills to produce new mineral color paintings.

　　Li also told me that mineral pigments were not only bright in color and hard to fade, but also environmentally friendly and good to the sustainable development of the society. Mineral color painting was originated in China, with a long history. It is the responsibility and obligation of Chinese artists to inherit it and carry it forward, and bring new life to the traditional Chinese culture by integrating it with the western culture and the modern world culture.

　　After several contacts, I have known better about Li Ying. She is like a fairy playing among the flowers. She is a diligent artist, inherits and develops Chinese mineral color painting skills, integrates the painterly languages of the East and the West and adds the beauty to the world through her artistic creation.

作者：Liu,Sha