A Woman’s Fairy Tale

　　Recently, Dalian native, Liang Qun, had an exhibition in her hometown. It was like handing in a homework assignment, giving the parents sweet wine and presenting flowers to her hometown . Year 2005 marked Liang Qun’s emergence as an artist into the spotlight.

　　A few years ago, I was writing articles about Europe at home, when a friend told me there was a painter called Liang Qun, who was doing paintings based on her experiences in Europe. It would be nice for me to visit her and her studio. Actually I knew the name Liang Qun for a long time but had never met her in person. She is the youngest sister in a big family, many of them in the arts. Her husband, Yuan Ziniu, also a painter, opened a gallery, which I had visited several times. Her another elder brother Liang Wenlun I know well, is a ceramist. I was in fond of lingering around the gallery whenever I dropped by. However, at that time, Liang Qun did not show herself a lot in public. For me, she was more like a lovely and dedicated wife, always behind her husband.

百花2008 / Flowers 2008

　　For a long period of time, Liang Qun and I barely knew each other. I used to guess she was a painter only influenced and overshadowed by her brother and husband. Until, one day, Liang Qun surprised me and proved how dead wrong I was. It was in 1999 that the newspaper I was working for published an article about Liang Qun and her husband. They had acquired an old painting, which was drawn 100 years ago, about Qingniwa area of Dalian from a local family. Based on the old painting, Liang Qun created a six-meter-long painting for the 100th anniversary of Dalian City. I was deeply impressed by this, thinking that Liang Qun had done a really wonderful job and I could see the deep and quiet strength she had. I believed that this woman was talented enough to shine sooner or later in the public.

　　Later, I read one of her painting catalogues in my friend’s place. Without surprise , her name on the cover, and I saw the talent she showed up. Most importantly, what she painted touched the tone, for me, bitterly. I never expected she had put the memory of the old houses and streets, actually are disappearing nowadays, on the canvas. At that time, I was sadly editing a book about old architecture in Dalian. Her works exactly expressed how I felt about the old and warm past of Dalian. The old district where she grew up, those bitter yet warm old days, the sunsets which passed those windows and roofs, and the little games which were played by kids, all went into Liang Qun’s paintings. She witnessed all the changes and kept them alive in time and space by her paintings. The old houses Liang Qun painted were in Xi’an road, where she spent her childhood, and also started her art dreams.

意大利海岸 / The Coast of Italy 2011

 
回望体育场 / Looking Back at the Stadium 2002

　　Because of Liang Qun’s paintings, I travelled back to visit Xi’an road once again. I realized those old houses not only inspired Liang Qun in her art, but also sparked her special feelings to life in her work. Women and houses is like plant and earth. As Liang Qun started to paint those houses, she was like a plant which had already absorbed all the energies from earth and was ready to blossom. Those houses were her spiritual pursuits deep in heart although on the surface they appear like a woman’s intuition and habit.

　　I made a trip to Europe the year before she did. What remained in my mind about Europe are actually the uniquely different types of houses, European houses. You might find almost the same types of grasslands, trees, sky and rivers somewhere in Asia also, but the European style of houses is unique compared with the houses in Asia. Liang Qun was so enchanted by those European houses, as evidenced by her inclusion in her paintings.

　　In her studio, I saw paintings of houses in the sun, in the night light, along the river and on the top of mountains. Around those houses are streets, vines, lights along the road, squares, and churches. Houses in Liang Qun’s paintings were being abstracted into fairy tales. I could see her preference to European style houses even from her catalogue from the Dalian exhibit. Europe is like a heaven for her, where she fell in love with all kinds of stylish houses. In Liang Qun’s canvases, we see beautiful lines of the roof tops, the brightest and richest red sunset, and the colourful clouds. She has turned the old Europe into a young man. She admires Europe, and in those houses; she lost herself in that beautiful land.

　　In my opinion, most female writers are narcissistic, as are female painters. Many years ago, an art review that I read stated that female painters like to paint the little things around them, such as sparks of flowers and grass, or knitting and weaving. The author did not mean to look down on female painters, he just pointed out that we should pay attention to that kind of phenomenon. That commentary stayed in my mind for such a long time that I couldn’t help taking it as a criterion to judge female artists. When I was viewing Liang Qun’s paintings, I realized she is a little bit narcissistic too, but her passion and love flow out to the world, especially to those old houses, not narcissistically to herself. I got lost in the world presented by her paintings, and felt I was led by her all the way to her childhood in Xi’an road.

　　Not so long ago, I received a phone call from Liang Qun inviting me to her studio to look at the new painting, the Spring Flowers series. I asked her, “you don’t paint houses anymore?”, “I have never left them”, she answered. How could I imagine that she had let her houses blossom. She was inspired by a song called Hundreds of Flowers in Spring by He Xuntian, a famous composer. The flowers in Liang Qun’s paintings are not in the mountains but on the houses. Some say they don’t like the new paintings, but some fall in love with these paintings immediately. I am the later. I told her, “Liang Qun, you are like those flowers, you are blossoming today.”

百花2006 / Flowers 2006

百花2011 / Flowers 2011

　　In her studio, I saw a lighter Liang Qun. The heavy houses have been lifted from her shoulders. A lighter Liang Qun had achieved clarity of vision in her art. The flowers she painted are rich, rigorous, pure and light. I love those flowers so much.

　　There is an old Chinese saying, it goes like this: the highest wisdom is actually stupidity. The most complicated skill is actually awkwardness. The old houses in Dalian were fading away, which hurt Liang Qun considerably. In Europe, she was so excited by those grand and splendid European houses. While the houses in Spring Flowers turned Liang Qun from painful to happy, from active to quiet, she became much freer and more stable. I can even see she has included Chinese calligraphy, Peking opera, Chinese traditional spring festival drawings and collages, and even some Japanese flavors, in her paintings. There are many cultural symbols in those pink flowers.

　　Spring blossoms flowers, while autumn receives the full moon, summer has breezes, while winter gives us snow. On Liang Qun’s canvases, the moon, the breeze,and the snow are all like flowers, so are women. In this case, Liang Qun is not the person I used to know, seemingly boyishly vigorous. The Spring Flowers series allowed me to find out another Liang Qun, probably a true Liang Qun. At last she is a charming and enchanting lady, who is able to make the houses and the flowers match perfectly, keeping telling us fairy tales with her paintings.

2006