Liu Dan (1953- ) who was born in Nanjing and immigrated to United States later, is a world- famous Chines modern painter. He held many individual exhibitions in various parts of USA and took part in important exhibitions and events. Wen Fong(方聞), the retired professor of Princeton University, comment his painting as following:

“There are two obvious characteristics in Liu’s landscape painting. Firstly, he puts the paper on the wall, making painting like calligraphy. He holds his arm up in every stroke carefully. His painting depicts the shape of an object while expressing his emotion, which is the top achievement in Chinese traditional art of painting and calligraphy. Secondly, space-time in his painting keeps changing. His painting is vigorous and powerful, which seems like dragon jumping to the heavenly gate and tiger sleeping at the phoenix. Liu can reconstruct the spirit of mountain and the frame of the lake into the second nature. He creates his own style in inherit the tradition. Learning painting and calligraphy from Liu can acquire his teachings.

Xiangzhou started to working on Doctor of Art in Academy of Arts of Tsinghua University in 2006, learning from Professor Bao Lin. His aim was to force himself to read some books in a certain time with a reason, although he read a lot of books under the direction of his teachers. He tried to explore the connection of the pattern of Chinese traditional landscape painting and Chinese ancient wise men‘s view of the universe, to find out the pattern root of the shape variance of past ages, and elaborating the philosophy of Chinese painting from the dimensionality of pattern. He is in awe of the masterpieces of Chinese ancient masters. He magnified their masterpieces and imitating them, desiring to understand the universe principals of the classics with the honor to the ancient wise men。It’s not restoring the ancient ways, but reforging a style. If it is traditional, restoring and innovation are in the same time.

Dwellings in the Mountain 山居圖 INK ON PAPER, 2008 54? x 24? inches (137.5 x 61.5 cm.)

Like the Chinese poem saying ”studying on the metallurgy, smelt all the iron from many mountains”, Xiangzhou’s effort decided that the style of his paintings is unique. His uniqueness is not just form his excellent teachers, but also from his best Chinese ink and papers. After several years collection, Xiangzhou owned Chinese inks for royal family in Ming and Qing dynasty at a staggering rate. And he also tried to imitate tens of kinds of ancient paper at any price. Xiangzhou paints with Chinese inks for Emperor Qianlong, the color which is amazing. His paper for painting is customized according to the literature about the paper of Chengxin Hall in Nantang Dynasty, by Shiquge ancient paper factory in Jingxian, Anhui. The paper need to go glue and to be brushed 6 times with the planktonic pellet which is made from the Kwan-yin dust of the southern mud pool, and then waxed, boild and hammered.

Planktonic Kwan-yin dust is nanometer level pellet, which can help to increase the color rendering of the paper after brushing, boiling and hammering. If we assume there were 10 color gradations between black and white, there’re more than 1000 color gradations in paper of Chengxin Hall, which is also the reason why Li Gonglin, the famous painter in Song Dynasty, painted only on paper of Chengxin Hall. The meticulous research on material decides the works of Xiangzhou is unduplicated, which also shows the unique cultural value of his works. Xiangzhou Said:”In order to present the pattern in landscape painting and meanwhile meeting modern society taste, we should start from the experience of modern society, caring for the proper access of the living spirit of art, researching the material, techniques, medium and environment of pattern, and modern time-space experience to reforge a brush drawing language pattern reflecting modern aesthetic relationship. In short, we should not only kept the traditional art, but also the tradition of art.”