Author:Cheng Hsiang-Lung

Size:Length:83.1 x Width:103.2 (cm)

Size description：56×76 (畫心)

Introduction：Cheng Hsiang-Lung (1940-), a native of Hsinchu, Taiwan, is a prominent watercolor artist. He graduated from the art department of the Taiwan Provincial Taipei Normal School and has dedicated over four decades to the study and teaching of watercolor painting. Throughout his career, Cheng has been honored with numerous awards, including the Ministry of Education’s Literary and Artistic Creation Award, the Zhongshan Literary and Art Award, and the Qingxi Literary Award. He has been invited to participate in national art exhibitions and has held solo exhibitions at institutions such as the National Museum of History, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, and the National Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall. Additionally, he has served as a judge for various art exhibitions in Taiwan.

Cheng’s artwork primarily focuses on landscapes, cityscapes, still lifes, and depictions of everyday life. In his outdoor scenes, he skillfully employs reserved white spaces and contrasting tones to capture rich variations of light and shadow. In works portraying daily life, Cheng experiments with short brushstrokes and scattered white spaces to create lively visual effects. His use of color and treatment of light and shadow evoke comparisons to British watercolorist John Yardley (1933-), though Yardley often centers his work on street scenes, architecture, and harbors. Unlike Taiwanese watercolorists of the 1960s and 1970s—such as Liu Chi-wei, Hsi Te-chin, and Liang Dan-feng—who emphasized the transparency of watercolor and the aqueous qualities of washes to express a sense of depth, Cheng focuses more on capturing fleeting moments. He utilizes techniques like dry brushing, stitching, and washes to seize immediate impressions.

The artwork, “Scenery Beyond the Great Wall,” was part of the 2008 “International Watercolor Invitational Exhibition.” It depicts a scene of grassland yurts and travelers. The artist employs darker tones on the left to render the side of a yurt in the foreground, highlighting the sunlit areas of the midground and upper portions, creating a bright and lively contrast. The distant mountains are rendered with broad, light-colored brushstrokes, enhancing the sense of spatial depth. Through the painting's refreshing colors and concise composition, viewers can experience the comfortable ambiance of the frontier and the leisurely mood of the travelers.

Accession Number:PT09794100

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