Water Painter
By Jeff Lagrone
Visiting Artist Enjoys Productive Year At Lander Lander President Daniel Ball was headed to his office, undeterred by the fact that the university was closed due to wintry weather, when he encountered someone with as much steely resolve as he himself: Visiting Artist Xingxiong Liu, hard at work on a painting of Laura Lander Hall in the snow. As a renowned landscape artist, Liu spends more time painting scenes from the natural world than architecture, but the moment says a lot about his work ethic. His mantra is no pain, no gain. “I do not paint from snapshots taken by cameras,” says Liu, an associate professor of environmental arts at Lander’s sister school Jiangxi Normal University, as well as a senior visiting scholar at China Academy of Art. “I cannot paint diverse natural scenery inside a cozy studio, while sipping coffee and listening to the music of a saxophone.” Liu is “passionate about painting pictures in the wilderness, in places rarely touched by humans,” we are told in the preface to his recent book, Solitude – Oil Paintings and Prose: Ode to Mountains and Rivers. It’s an approach that has put him on a collision course with numerous wild animals and poisonous snakes, as well as hordes of mosquitoes. His most memorable experience was a bout with leeches in Tibet’s Tsangpo Gorge.
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Lander Magazine • Spring 2014
“They crept into our socks, attached themselves onto our legs with their suckers. Exposure of skin is an open invitation to these vampires, who would come in droves to suck the blood. Their persistent onslaught appalled us.” Liu’s main creative subject, he says, is painting water in the wild. He calls his inability to reach a particularly spectacular waterfall, which would have meant a 25-day hike through a remote region of Tibet, “a bitter disappointment. It is indeed the disappointment of my life.” Liu, who has traveled widely throughout Europe as well as Asia, speaks more positively about the experience of spending a year in America, a place he sees as “filled with natural beauty.” North Carolina’s Whitewater Falls and Rainbow Falls, which he painted during one of several trips with Lander faculty and staff members, are two cases in point. “They are gifted views granted by nature and must be praised,” he says. Since he was 10, Liu has been applying himself to the task of gaining proficiency as an artist. He believes that he has made strides, and that a masterpiece may finally be within reach. Unlike many serious artists, however, he holds no one in contempt for failing to grasp the nuances of the high style of painting to which he aspires. The artistic achievement of which he’s proudest, he says, is his ability to bring pleasure to people through his work. Liu’s oil landscapes, paintings on rice paper and watercolors were recently featured in a display titled Journey East Meets West, in Lander’s Monsanto Gallery. He hopes they made a favorable impression. “I really love this place,” he said. “I hope that people at Lander and in Greenwood enjoy my work.” – Photo by Jon Holloway