Posted 2018/8/16
"The blooming flowers, veiled in the golden color gamut with subtle levels, flickered with different poses and states, which can’t be defined in any settled time and places. It’s all between the representational and non-representational, flowing out a refreshing and attractive rhyme from the large painting”. This is the work of the famous painter Professor Chen Peirong according to the writer. The musical elegance and solemnity presented by the virtual and mysterious context give full expression of the painter’s mind. Thinking about Professor Chen’ s several decades of studying the Chinese style watercolor painting and his innovative creation of cloth-cover watercolor painting, I was deeply touched by his braveness, innovative spirit as well as the unsatisfaction when it comes to pursuing art. I am relatively more familiar with the representative works of Chen’s watercolor painting on paper done in the late 20th century, from which I discovered the similarities and differences between cloth-cover watercolors and traditional watercolors on paper as well as the breakthroughs in it. The material and texture of cloth-cover is very different from drawing paper, making the former more difficult to absorb and digest water moisture, which requires the painter to have high capacity of combining water and colors properly. Once the problem of combining color, water and cloth-cover is addressed, the visual effects of the painting will be completely different. In Professor Chen’s cloth-cover painting, besides the fully-expressed unique charm of watercolor, there’s no obscurity in its fineness and no emptiness in its visionary world. It shows an elegant and mellow flavor of peculiar feature with hazy context, which is the best part unable to be realized through traditional watercolors on paper.
Of course, the quality of the painting can’t be decided on the size of the picture. There are many good works that can show a big world through a small picture and small pleasant points in big picture among Chinese and Western paintings. However, it can’t be denied that the size of a picture does bring different visual effects. A watercolor painting based on large cloth cover，undoubtedly, develops a new world for extending the momentum of the painting. At least in Chen’s watercolors, the magnificent effect brought by the large picture is far more fascinating than by small pictures. Thus, we may say that the large cloth cover of watercolors by Professor Chen probably changes the old conception that watercolors only can be done with small frames.
