In Huang Lao's paintings, even ordinary things, such as chickens and dogs in the Chinese zodiac, should not be taken lightly, but often have different meanings. For example, the two pictures entitled "Wei Yuan's Dawn Window" are all painted with chickens, and the inscription and postscript are all Wei Yuan's poem "Dawn Window": "If you don't hear the chicken sleeping, you will hear the chicken singing. Through the ages, thousands of generations have killed several voices. " This poem can naturally lead to thinking about life. Some people think that it expresses a sense of killing life, and Huang Lao may also have this intention. But I'm afraid it's more than that. About Huang Lao's ink focuses on the word "sleep", especially the word "get up"-just as "sleeping with little smell of chickens" may be a hard study by chickens at night, or it may be a candlelight night outing; "When you hear a chicken's voice," you may be full of courage, or you may not be able to get up early without benefit.
there are many such works. For example, in The Greedy Spring, Wu Yinzhi, who dares to drink the water of the greedy spring, is a secretariat in Guangzhou, a place where "rare things come out". After he became an official, he "returned to his boat, pretending that he had no spare money", just as his poem wrote: "It is not easy to try to make foreigners drink together." It serves to show that "it is a clean government, not a verbal shout." For example, "Great Wealth" was originally a flower symbolizing wealth, but it was a big fish. It was the kind of fish that Sima Qian said, and it was even more obvious that the wealth was unknown. From this, it can be seen that Huang Lao's painting is not so much a commentary in the painting as an essay in the painting.
According to Fang's comments, many of Huang Lao's works directly appeal to intuition. First of all, they give people a shock with overall momentum, causing great inner tension, which has the effect of "beating the head"; There are also many works with profound picture meanings, which are hard to be coquettish only by looking and feeling, but also need to be read, thought and realized, so we can't ignore the inscriptions on the paintings. Huang Lao's inscriptions and postscripts are not only hand-picked from ancient and modern poems, but also written by himself, perhaps more incisive. For example, "Liaozhai Sharp Knife": "If you have a mouth and don't condemn bloodthirsty, you will be praised and cut." Its subtle vigilance can be seen here. This may be due to the fact that Huang Lao is also a essayist, and every time he produces, most of them are good, and he seems to prefer his own essays. He once joked that it is a pity to publish a collection of essays because there are not many articles, so many paintings are added. I'm afraid it's not an exaggeration to say that he writes in paintings, but he can integrate articles, calligraphy and painting in one furnace to make them complement each other and form his own unique style.
Some people say that Huang Lao's paintings are literati paintings, and he is "the leader of contemporary literati paintings". Literati painting is about painting for literati, but not all of us can understand it, so some people say that "his painting is the kind of painting that can curb the experts, and the pen and brush remain intrinsic and rigorous, and no one is idle"; Because his paintings are quite different from the traditional literati paintings in facing life squarely, some people say that "he is pioneering today's New literati paintings". I dare not pretend to understand the literati painting, but I think it is worthwhile to "face life, face life squarely, torture the soul and carry forward the spirit of freedom, so that his works shine brilliantly".