BRUSH AND KNIFE

Xiao Song Jiang
From inkdancechinesepaintings.com

Xiao Song Jiang
From blog.oilpaintersofamerica.com

Xiao Song Jiang was born in 1955, in Wuhan, China. In 1978 he studied fine arts at the China Academy of Art, formerly the Zhejiang Art Academy, where he graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in 1982, then began lecturing watercolor at the City of Wuhan Construction College. Four years after, Song was selected to further develop his skill at the provincial Hubei Art Academy. During his time there, he accumulated years of experience, painting, sketching, and working for a refined grasp of color and technique.
Throughout his early career, Song has received numerous awards as one of the representatives of Chinese paintings with works displayed at international art exhibitions in the United States, Japan, Hong Kong, Turkey, and Singapore. He also had the honor of having four representative works collected and preserved at the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) and three works at the Jiangsu Provincial Art Museum.
In 1988, Song immigrated to Canada and invested a passion for its vivid scenes of the broad North American landscape. While there, he travelled widely from coast to coast and gained some 20 years of experience forming his unique style of a mixture of brush and knife with attention to the unique natural detail, richer handling of light, shadow and depth in each piece, which has won him numerous awards in North American exhibitions and art festivals.
He now lives by the lake in Toronto, Canada with his wife and son. He is influenced by the beautiful land and friendly people. Through his paintings, he wishes to express his love to the North American landscape and all its people.
(blog.oilpaintersofamerica.com)

Boat Place
From wallsgallery.com

Tide
From oilpaintersofamerica.deviantart.com

Morning

Dawn

Birch

Lane of Venice
Images from jrmooneygalleries.blogspot.com

Brown’s Memory


Evening of July


Fishing Port

Harbor of the Fall
Images from southwestart.com

As he had done every day when his factory shift was finished, the young man had bicycled to the Yangtze River in the middle of the large industrial city of Wuhan, where he grew up. There, for an hour and a half each day, he spent his only free time making oil sketches of river traffic and docks. There was no money for canvases, so he painted on cardboard. He’d received no formal art education, since Mao Tse-tung’s communist government closed schools before Jiang reached high school, and he—along with millions of other students—had been forced to leave the cities and work on farms. As a teenager with an artistic sensibility, Jiang sought out books of Western poetry and novels by Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas. Libraries had been shut down, and all aspects of Western culture were banned, so he borrowed books in secret from friends.

(Excerpts from China-born painter Xiao Song Jiang, reflects on his artistic journey and goals by Gussie Fauntleroy at southwestart.com)

Reflection of summer

Rest

The Noon

Images from Eric Smith Artexpo/Spectrum Art Show's photostream



As a boy in Wuhan before the Cultural Revolution, which lasted from 1966 to 1976, he thought he wanted to be an architect. His father was a technical engineer, and his mother worked as a primary-school principal. But the closing of schools eliminated that option, and his creative energy was funneled instead into teaching himself to paint. When Chinese society was reopened and began to modernize through the policies of Mao’s successor, Jiang saw his persistence in self-education begin to pay off. Out of hundreds of applicants from his home province who underwent the highly competitive examination process, he was the only one accepted into the Zhejiang Art Academy (now the China Academy of Art.) Because he had worked more than five years at the factory, Chinese policy at the time granted him a stipend for studying, allowing him to purchase better art supplies. He was placed in the printmaking department, his second choice, but his watercolor instructor allowed him to work in oils during class.

After earning a bachelor of arts, Jiang taught watercolor to architecture students at a government-run construction college in Wuhan. Then came further studies at Hubei Art Academy and the selection of his paintings by the Chinese government for inclusion in several international exhibitions. Jiang’s sister-in-law had studied in Canada, and through her he learned of an opportunity to show his work in Edmonton, Alberta.

In 1988 he traveled to Edmonton for a one-man show. Following the show he intended to return to China, where his wife and 6-month-old son remained. The Chinese government further encouraged his return by offering him a voucher to buy a motorcycle, a rare and hard-to-obtain commodity during that period in China. Then came Tiananmen Square. The massive protests in major Chinese cities—including Wuhan—and ensuing massacres by the Chinese army became symbolized internationally by a lone protester facing down a row of tanks. Having published writings critical of the government in a Chinese newspaper, Jiang was concerned about the government’s response should he return.

He obtained asylum in Canada and remained, joined two years later by his wife and son. In 1992 the family moved to Toronto, which offered a vibrant art community and proximity to other large cities. Initially Jiang supported his family as a street 
artist creating charcoal portraits, but his landscapes soon began to catch collectors’ eyes. For 13 years he attended Art-
expo New York, where galleries purchased virtually everything he brought.

(Excerpts from China-born painter Xiao Song Jiang, reflects on his artistic journey and goals by Gussie Fauntleroy at southwestart.com)