Cascade

After his first solo Hong Kong exhibition, He Baili was determined to push Chinese landscape painting into new territories. Throughout his artistic career, that has spanned five decades, his paintings continue to present dynamic scenes of nature bursting with energy. Studying Chinese painting under Zhao Shaoang, a master from the Lingnan School, he learned to place great emphasis on observation. He Baili has traveled extensively to famous mountains and streams and has since been enlightened by all that he has seen. Indebted to Western-style education and his later emigration to North America, he absorbed the colourful aesthetics of Western art and separated himself from traditional Song dynasty style landscape painting which is next to monochrome. He depicts compelling and dazzling natural scenes with neo-techniques such as those termed 'splashed ink', 'broken ink', 'piled ink', 'splashed colour', and 'mixed-colour wash'. Inspired by both Romantic and Impressionist paintings, his works are known for subtle colour change. His free brushwork, with colour outweighing the ink, still successfully grasps the sublimity, solidity, and poetic essence of traditional Chinese landscape painting. While the views might appear familiar, they go beyond representation by imbedding the work with the artist's own thought. The reverie, based on reality, allows the viewer to feel like they are part of the scene. The painting, as a medium to commune with nature, grants the viewer an insight into the philosophy of Zhou Dunyi, the Song Dynasty rationalist Confucian, who regarded life as harmony between nature and human, believing that 'the interaction of Yin and Yang creates All things'. He Baili considers painting as a representation of the mind and the true significance of landscape lies not in its superficial appearance but as a carrier of emotion. This unique 'He-style landscape' is the embodiment of the perfect combination of Western philosophy and Taoist thought in which reality and illusion co-exist.