Leng Xu's evaluation

Looking back on his painting history is a novel and pure feeling, which is very convincing. On the basis of experiencing life and sketching in western Liaoning, Leng Xu further expanded and enriched his artistic vision and language connotation. In his usual description of three-dimensional dense farmhouses, the interests of ethereal, swimming and contrast are greatly integrated, and the overall sense of the picture is stronger. In his painting Home, he played a solemn movement produced by the collision between man and nature. An important feature of Leng Xu's landscape painting is to emphasize freehand brushwork and generalization, and pay attention to the grasp of the overall charm, instead of listing all the local concrete images one by one, regardless of size. Arbitrary vertical and horizontal, like liberation, random hair growth, highlighting the key points, the spirit and soul of the landscape will be "ready to come out" through rough and heroic pen and ink language, giving people a stirring sense of strength and tragic feeling. Therefore, in Leng Xu's works, sometimes even if it is only a small scene in western Liaoning in content and a small frame in scale format, it can still reflect a vigorous atmosphere and give people a breathtaking aesthetic feeling. If the woods and huts in Silent Hometown, Late Autumn Scroll, Years, Records of Mountain Villages, Kanto Old People's Village and other works are associated with the rugged peaks in Lian Mian, then the works such as Wusuo Gorge, Autumn Rain and Shan Jutu are the rich grasses of nature. Powerful pen and ink are in sharp contrast with the natural landscape, showing a different style and charm.

Looking at Leng Xu's landscape paintings, what can best express his personality and characteristics in artistic interest is his pen and ink. Leng Xu spoke highly of Huang. In Huang's landscape paintings, the essence of pen and ink tradition is a high degree of tacit understanding from ancient to new, from subjective to objective, from emotion to form, and from meaning to form. On the one hand, he grasped the spirit of pen and ink, on the other hand, he grasped the charm of nature. He is anti-traditional in performance, but he inherits the tradition better. Trees and houses-natural images and pen and ink painting forms have reached unprecedented harmony.

In a sense, the spiritual realm achieved by Leng Xu's landscape painting is largely provided by the taste of calligraphy and seal cutting knives. His landscape painting has two aspects: the brushwork of calligraphy and the charm of seal cutting, or in other words, there are two realistic ways: one is to introduce the formal composition and aesthetic characteristics of seal cutting into painting, making it the language and means of painting, and changing "painting" into "painting". In this respect, Wu Changshuo is the most typical. The second is to use red dots in the works to deepen the theme. Compared with the two, the former is internal and the latter is external, while Lengxu is an internal and external two-way wheel. Specifically, on the one hand, Leng Xu broke the procedural barrier of traditional seal cutting and changed seal cutting into calligraphy and seal cutting, which is the most free spirit and can best reflect the painter's emotion and personality; Create unique language and symbols. The vigorous atmosphere of the painting scene reflects each other, making it an organic part of the picture. In this way, Leng Xu's landscape paintings have a strong, visually oriented modern style and modern characteristics in composition form.

It should be said that seal cutting has made Leng Xu's landscape painting. Leng Xu said in "Random Thoughts on Learning Arts": "I am good at seal cutting. Although I have dabbled in many aspects on the road of learning, I am most interested in ancient seals and China seals. " The seals he participated in and won, whether Bai, Zhu or Xiao, are full of the flavor of China seal and ancient seal. Its word method mostly adopts the simplicity of Han official seal, the simplicity, nature and roughness of ancient seal and Chinese private seal, and the simplicity and solemnity of the picture decoration. Most of the rules draw lessons from the natural smoothness of ancient seals, emphasizing the composition of the printing surface. Leng Xu also paid attention to the methods of drawing nutrition from Han portrait brick, Han Ming seal script, tile seal, seal and Tang, Song and Yuan seal, sorting out seal surface and handling fonts. In fact, like Leng Xu, there are only a handful of people who can get the samadhi of ancient seal and Chinese seal and combine them properly in the seal cutting world. Leng Xu's seal should be attributed to "magnificence" in aesthetic orientation, with rigidity on the outside and softness on the inside, giving priority to rigidity and combining rigidity with softness. Its printing is dangerous, indulgent and vigorous, single-knife, double-knife, punching knife, cutting knife and printing knife, regardless of work, using emotion to control the knife, showing the grandeur and broadness of Shen Feng in Han and India, and even Qin and Han dynasties.

Undoubtedly, Leng Xu's integration of seal cutting and calligraphy into landscape painting is an innovation for China landscape painting. Western Liaoning, to which Hongshan Culture belongs, is the source and milk of Leng Xu's landscape painting creation. However, the function of this source and milk is mainly reflected in the cultivation of character, the observation of spirit and the experience of life, which does not prevent Leng Xu from making his own exploration and choice in painting language and form. The old house in western Liaoning, which has gone through many vicissitudes, came into his picture, becoming the blending and collision of Jiao Mo and ink-dripping Xuan paper, the mutual growth of instant experience and artistic interest, and the aesthetic pursuit of activating interaction with tension and rhyme. These things are naturally produced from his inner needs, which makes the object image become the mental image, and then the mental image becomes the image through pen and ink, and becomes the life expression with the purpose. In a sense, it is this transformation and transition from object image to mental image, and from mental image to mental image that makes Leng Xu, a traditional Chinese painting, have a freehand brushwork spirit and noble context, a distance from previous landscape paintings in appearance, a strong modern consciousness and abundant personal temperature, and a regional painting style.

In recent years, Leng Xu's landscape paintings have made important achievements, and "Cragginess Rock" was selected as "2000 National Exhibition of Chinese Paintings". Won the gold medal in the "Third Prince Cup Cross-Strait Painting and Calligraphy Art Exhibition"; Participated in the "Northeast Art Fair" in 2000 and won the silver prize; Hometown without Words won the first prize of the Third Liaoning Minority Art Calligraphy Photography Exhibition. "Hometown" was selected as "New Era China Art Exhibition". In 2002, he won the "National Olympic China Art Exhibition" Excellence Award; "Mountain Village Chronicle" won the "2002 National Chinese Painting Exhibition" Excellence Award; "Hometown" won the gold medal in Liaoning exhibition area in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of Comrade Mao Zedong's speech at Yan 'an Forum on Literature and Art. In 2003, "Taihang Style" was selected as the "Second National China Art Exhibition". "Love Home" was selected as "2003 National Exhibition of Chinese Paintings"; Won the first prize of the first national double-support painting and calligraphy art exhibition of "Fish and Water"; "Guandong Laomintun" was selected by Liaoning Artists Association for 50 years and won an award.

Leng Xu's landscape painting is serious and lively, and is entering a mature stage. He knows that there are still many ways to improve and develop the style or mode he created, although it is a road full of thorns.