A Gathering of Pines and Clouds

Contemporary ink master Li Huayi was born in Shanghai in 1948. He studied traditional ink paintings and calligraphy in his early years, and upon moving to San Francisco in the 1980s, he received training in Western art. His exposure to these two different art schools has served as a guiding post to create his iconic, majestic landscape style during his time in San Francisco. With influences from the Northern Song landscape tradition and the grand, monumental California landscape, Li explores the myriad of ways to combine postmodernist ideas with traditional Chinese literary subject matters.
A Gathering of Pines and Clouds fully manifests Li’s expression of monumentality in his landscape. Rather than painting the landscape in panoramic view, the artist delineates the mountains, clouds, and pine trees in close-up details to create a harmonious beauty of sublimity and vastness. Li’s brushwork demonstrates a clear contrast between light and shadow. This innovation in ink paintings has come from western oil painting techniques in which Li sought inspiration.
As if leading the viewers on a journey of self-reflection, Li paints a personal and philosophical dialogue between man and nature – a dialogue connecting himself, the viewers and the many Chinese literati painters who came before him.