杨得聆的水彩作品，澄明轻快、洒脱空灵。她娴熟地驾驭水的流走性，把光和色在大气中的感觉融化在收放自如的笔触之中。她以一种介乎具象与意象之间的概念来统御画面的形象，在大笔挥洒的写意表述中，又于聚焦处营造细微的肌理来捕捉观众的视觉。那水色交融下生成的形象所呈现的偶然效果，揭示了她以扎实的造型能力来掌控艺术的随意性。杨得聆的水彩，是从她斑斓沉稳、充满光色愉悦的油画中派生出来的具有实验前瞻性的艺术。

水彩和油画本来就有着姐妹般的关系。然而，杨得聆的水彩与她的油画走着两个不同的方向。她的油画最早受印象派着色的影响，尤其对波纳尔的风格深入研究。其作品光色层次和谐丰润，在借鉴波纳尔绘画特色的同时，努力寻求开拓个人的发展方向。杨得聆在艺术探索路向上，水彩看来是她作为实验先锋的称心媒材。她的油画虽然在追求一种朦胧虚松的画面效果，但基本仍在具象的范畴。可是她的水彩却超越了现实形象的羁绊，在概略色面的溶合中，在水渍流痕的交织中，试图探索一种超乎象外的境界。

杨得聆的水彩绘画不同于我们常见的两种水彩画风类型：其一是上世纪初最早源自广东李铁夫先生留美归国时带回的水彩画风，他把中国传统艺术的水墨写意笔法融汇到萨金特水色交融、潇洒悦目的湿画法中。虽然其运笔偏于写意，但描绘仍离不开写实的视象。其后，一些留欧学艺先驱以及在国内衍生的相类水彩风格，均发源自李铁夫这一脉，俨然成为中国水彩艺术发展的主轴。其二是源自广州美院教授王肇民先生的干画法，王先生的画风显而易见地受塞尚平面色块和形体分解的理念所启迪，与铁夫的淋漓尽致相径庭。上世纪八十年代伊始，西方现代艺术思潮的源源涌进，促成了王肇民水彩画风被广泛地开拓与继承的机遇，嗣后在南方画坛形成一可观的板块。杨得聆的水彩作品，在水色淋漓的概略挥写中把真实的形象融化为一种意象表述的风格，在上述两种代表性的画风之间开垦出一片个人的天地。它具有西方现代水彩的语言特色，又有中国传统艺术泼墨式的淋漓视觉效果。它带给观众一种澄怀愉悦、超脱浮生的安适感。

水彩虽然是一独立画种，但某些作品在特定的情形下又可归入素描一类，西方当代素描艺术经常把水彩媒材的作品包括在内。如果我们追溯西方早期的水彩，大都是在铅笔线性的素描稿上着色，水分不多，色调比较单一，甚至让画面留下许多铅笔线条的痕迹，可见其与素描关系之密切。素描艺术除了它所特有即兴性、亲昵性之外，其实验性和探索性则是不可忽视的功能。杨得聆的水彩与油画并行不悖，然而她的水彩是走在前面的，它的角色就如一位艺术的探索者和实验者，其搜索的资讯和试验的成果自然反馈到油画创作之中。因此，杨得聆近期油画艺术的突进，正揭示了她在水彩领域中努力获得的新成果。我们在观赏她的水彩画作时所获得的快感，犹如在观赏一泓澄澈透底的湖水，那光色折射时所产生的影象，悠然荡漾在真实与虚渺之间。

                                                                    钟耕略  （著名旅美艺术家、评论家、策展人）

 

 

Between Reality and Unreality

——Yang Deling’s Watercolors

 

 

Yang Deling’s watercolor paintings are bright and lively, free and lyrical. She skillfully controls the flow of water, melting the grandeur of light and color into brushstrokes that move between restraint and freedom. Using concepts that lie between the figurative and the abstract, she controls the imagery in her paintings. With her free, expressive brushstrokes, she creates focal points with a subtle texture that capture the viewer’s eye. The chance effects presented in the forms produced by blending water and color reveal her assured skills in modeling and the controlled ease of her art. Yang’s watercolors are experimental and farsighted, which are then distilled into her gorgeous, sedate, bright, and joyful oil paintings.

 

Watercolor and oil paintings are sister media, but Yang’s watercolors and oil paintings move in two different directions. Her oil paintings were first influenced by the Impressionists’ use of color, and she also closely studied the work of Pierre Bonnard. The layers of light and color in the works are harmonious and rich. While learning from the paintings of Bonnard, she worked to develop her own artistic style. Within these explorations, Yang’s watercolors are a good vehicle for her experiments. Although she pursues a hazy, relaxed effect, her oil paintings still essentially fall within the realm of the figurative, while her watercolors transcend the restraints of real figures. In the fusion of the lines, colors, and planes, and the intersecting traces of water, she attempts to explore a realm beyond appearances.

 

Yang’s watercolor paintings are different from the two types of watercolors we commonly see. The first is the watercolor style that Guangdong native Li Tiefu brought back from his time in America in the early twentieth century; he blended the freehand ink techniques of Chinese traditional art with John Singer Sargent’s pleasingly blended wet-brush technique. Although Li’s brushwork tended toward the freehand, his paintings do not depart from realistic visual forms. Later, pioneering artists who had studied in Europe and a few watercolor styles that were derived in China perpetuated Li Tiefu’s approach, which still functions as the primary axis for Chinese watercolors today. The second style comes from the dry-brush paintings of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts professor Wang Zhaomin. Wang’s style was obviously inspired by Cézanne’s planar blocks of color and decomposed forms, which stood in contrast to Li’s refined practice. Beginning in the 1980s, ideas from Western modern art poured into China, which meant that Wang’s watercolor style was widely developed and perpetuated, and it later constituted a major style in the southern Chinese painting world. With uninhibited outlines and watery pigments, Yang’s watercolor works blend real forms with a conceptual yet descriptive style, reclaiming a personal universe between these two representative modes. Her work has the traits of modern Western watercolors, while presenting the uninhibited visual effects of traditional Chinese splashed ink techniques. The pieces convey a delightful, ephemeral sense of comfort to the viewer.

 

Although watercolors are an independent genre, certain works can be classified as a type of sketching under special circumstances; the genre of contemporary drawing in the West often includes watercolor works. If we trace early Western watercolors, the majority were colored pencil sketches, with monotonous colors and little added water. Artists even left a number of pencil lines visible, so viewers would appreciate the close relationship between the painting and the sketch. In addition to the spontaneous, intimate qualities of sketching, its experimental and exploratory function cannot be overlooked. Yang’s watercolors and oil paintings are not separate entities; her watercolors come first, and they serve as artistic explorations and experiments. The information for which she searches and the results of her experiments naturally feed back into her oil paintings. Thus, Yang Deling’s recent advances in oil painting are the new results of her work in watercolors. The happiness we experience when viewing her watercolors is like that of looking into a perfectly clear, limpid lake; the images produced when the light reflects off the surface hover between reality and unreality.

 

                                                                                                            KANG L.CHUNG

                                                                                      (Noted artist, critic, and curator)

作者：钟耕略