探求材质之美

——有感周榕清画作

何为绘画技巧？通常被关注的只是造型、色彩和笔法三类，而作为技巧的组成部分的“材料”却经常被忽视。一件作品材质本身的魅力和思想魅力，往往会使作品灼灼生辉，能在视觉感受上触动心灵，因为“材料的内在性质既是物质的，又是非物质的”，透过物质的表层可窥见艺术家的思维和与之对应的语言。沿流溯源，回望欧洲的绘画历史，我们可以看到近两千年的透明画法和近三百年的直接画法，使用的是不同的绘画材料，在造型色彩的表达方式上也不相同。至于现代绘画（包括油画）所用的材料更有新的拓展。从我国近百年的油画发展史来看，对材料的研究与运用是比较滞后的。为推动我国油画的多元化发展，中央美术学院油画系于1999年成立了“材料表现工作室”并开始招生，对油画的材料与表现进行专题研究，从材料语言的角度拓展艺术思维的新空间，从文化与观念的角度寻找继承传统的切入点。周榕清正是在当代中国油画发展的这种背景下开始了他的油画硕士学业，开始有目的的涉猎材料问题。

周榕清对拓展油画材料有着浓厚的兴趣，这与他作品所热衷表现土楼风情内容密切有关。土楼民居可谓中华民族的建筑奇葩之一。周榕清常去闽西南一带收集土楼风情素材，多年来创作了数量可观的作品而且内容是全方位的，有风景如：油画《夕照土楼》、《土楼晨曦》、《土楼遗韵》、《盼》、《土楼布达拉宫》、《方土楼城》等以及漆画《土楼秋色》、《土楼春晓》、《源远流长》、《土楼一角》等；有生活场景如：油画《老井》、《火鸡》、《晒烟叶》、《织毛线》、《丰收》、《称烟叶》等；有静物如：油画《磨茶机》、《扬谷机》、《红星不灭》、《笋干系列》和漆画《红柜子》、《老灶》、《农闲》等。画中那在黛浓郁葱的峰恋衬托下或在清秋夕阳的余辉里的圆筒形房屋给人以奇特的视觉感受。近而观之，土楼新墙结实粗糙的墙体，旧墙经风化，泥层脱落，出现裂隙和大小洞穴，以及不规整的大小石块叠砌的墙基，路面或用粗壮的巨石板条搭建的土楼大门和台阶，质感或显斑驳、粗砺或显年代久远的磨光特征，而大幅构图的静物组画中土楼居民所用的旧家具有年代的油漆脱落的民间木头柜子，凹瘪不堪的金属锅、陈旧的大木桶、竹篮、旧斗笠、老土灶、各种形状大小的陶罐，还有体积较大的老式磨茶机、脱谷机以及农产品如烟叶、笋干等等所有这些均分别组合在不同的农舍背景之中，无论是景还是物均给人以历史沧桑感，丰富多变的物体质感正是周榕清审美情趣之所在。“科学让各人按照各人的嗜好去喜爱合乎他气质的东西，特别用心研究与他精神最投机的东西”（丹纳?艺术哲学），周榕清的“嗜好”与“用心”已溶进土楼的每寸土地和每件细小物体。他感到单靠普通的油画手法已无法抒发与他“精神最投机的东西”，这促使他用心研究材料，欲借助材料提高油画表现力，穷其深入刻划之能事以表达心中的土楼风情物象。

周榕清的油画用了两种不同性质的材料塑形做底，一种是水溶性的膏状体可在上面覆盖透明色或不透明色均不吸油，一种是油性膏状体既可覆盖透明或不透明油色，亦可与油画色混合使用，上述两者材料均是快干的，因此可以用来如浮雕般厚塑表现物象，这是白油画色无法胜任的。周榕清的大部分油画作品，都以精心做底并通过反复的色层覆盖、刮刻，或透明罩染让底层色从覆盖色的间隙中透出，或从透明色下折射出来，产生丰富多彩的肌理美感。

值得一提的是，周榕清在一部分作品中还尝试使用实物粘贴，而后以油色覆盖和透明色罩染，通过色彩的联接，实物与画面融为一体然而又有别样的视觉感受，如油画《笋干系列》画面上使用了竹根、竹叶、竹干、竹扇骨、篾器、麻布等实物粘贴在画面上，并用塑底材料塑造浮雕般的笋干以抽象的构图组合成画面，作品中不同材料所呈现的材质美感强化了作品的张力，是一组颇具表现性和现代感的作品。

缘于对古典透明画的审美思维和对材质美的痴迷追求，周榕清发现漆画的材质特性和古典油画透明画法的材质很接近，即底层色从不同厚薄的透明油层下透出，以不同的折射率映入观看的眼睛，产生极其微妙的色光变化，晶莹剔透，富有幽幽的神秘感。大漆材质品格高贵，加上漆画采用种类更多的材料，如金铂、银铂、螺钿、蛋壳等等使得画面“贵族”气十足。漆画的材质魅力也成了“与他精神最投机的东西”这就是他介入漆画创作就一发不可收拾的原因，近年周榕清创作了数量可观的漆画作品。他拜漆艺老艺人为师学习地道的漆技术，掌握天然大漆材料的使用方法技巧，尤其最后一道工序，须用手掌轻轻推摩画面，他仿佛感到自身的血气不断地传入作品之中，作品似从神秘的面纱后面露出的脸孔，渐渐地清晰起来，这种制作过程的体验，很令他着迷。他把油画的学养观念，材料技法融入漆画之中，回避程式化，他的漆画与油画似乎有某种内在联系，感觉是和谐与统一的。漆画制作工序繁杂，费时费力，要有足够的耐心和毅力。探求材质美的心境给予他最大的动力。在短短的一二年里创作数十幅作品并获得福建省百花文艺奖，这说明他的探索是成功的。

探求材质美的过程也是艺术家征服材料的过程。“艺术材料制约着艺术形式，征服材料的技巧则制约着艺术风格”，周榕清在油画和漆画两个不同的领域里都有一套自己的征服材料和技巧，尽管还处在探索的过程中，但个人风格初见端倪。凭着他的勤奋与执着，一定会渐趋成熟。我期待他有更多风格鲜明作品问世

林之耀 福建师大美术学院教授 ，硕士生导师，福建师大美术研究所副所长。
中国美术家协会会员，福建省美协常务理事，中国油画学会福州高校团体分会会长，
福建省画院特聘画师，福建省民盟书画学会副会长

The Beauty of materials

——Thoughts on Zhou Rongqing’s Paintings

When it comes to painting techniques, it is not unusual that people attach great attention to composition, coloring and brush running, while the material, an equally important part of painting techniques, is often ignored. As a matter of fact, the material of an art work can contribute a lot to its contents and brilliance, because “the essence of a material is both material bound and material beyond”, namely, the artist’s thoughts and the art language he uses can often be obtained from exploration into the material. Tracing the European art history, we may find that the transparency technique since 2000 years ago and the direct technique since 300 years ago, in addition to the different ways to show their compositions and colorings, the materials they used are also quite different, not to speak of the materials used in modern painting (including oil painting). To keep pace with the global trend, Oil Painting Department Central Academy of Fine Arts established in 1994 the Material Expression Studio, beginning to enroll students and make specific studies on painting materials. It is in light of this that Zhou Rongqing began his postgraduate studies in Oil Painting, and got involved in the painting materials deliberately

Zhou Rongqing’s keen interests in diversifying the painting materials are closely related to his fascination with Earth Building Complex, one of the wonders in Chinese Architecture History. He visited there often and produced considerable works covering various aspects of the Earth Buildings, such as the landscape series: the Sunset, the Dawn, Old Earth Building, Anticipation, the “Potala Palace”, Square Earth Building，the Autumn, the Spring Morning, Elapse of Time，A Corner；the life scene series: Well, Turkey, Drying the Tobacco Leaves, Knitting, Harvest, Weighing the Tobacco Leaves; still life series: Tea-grinding Machine,, Inextinguishable Stars, Air-dried Bamboo Shoots, Red Cupboard, Kitchen Range, Slack Season etc.. In these paintings, the cylindrical houses against the blue mountains or bathed in the sunset strike people as unique. A closer look into them will unfold in details the textural differences between the newly-built walls and more ancient ones, of the wall bases by stones of irregular sizes, and of the gates and steps made up of huge slab stones. While the antique appliances in the still-life paintings are distributed in different settings, both the objects and the scenes imposing on people a sense of passage of time. The richness in the physical textures of different objects are just where Zhou Rongqing focuses his own aesthetic interests. For all his addiction and attention poured into the Earth Building, Zhou Rongqing found that conventional oil painting can’t satisfy adequately his urge to express the inspirations deep in his mind, and then decided to concentrate on the new exploration into the painting materials to enhance the impressiveness of oil paintings about the sceneries and customs of the Earth Buildings.

Zhou Rongqing has two different materials as the base for his paintings: an dissolvable paste to lay transparent colors or opaque colors on, which thus will not absorb the oil, and an oily paste which can not only be covered with transparent colors or opaque colors but also can be mixed with oil painting colors. Both materials are easy to dry, so they can be used to show the objects like the relief, which, however, cannot be achieved by the white oil normally used. Most of Zhou Rongqing’s works have carefully chosen base, impressing people greatly with its texture beauty by repeatedly layer-adding, carving and transparent dyeing.

What also deserves our attention is that in some of his works Zhou Rongqing attempts to paste real objects, and then cover them with oil colors and dye with transparent colors, achieving the harmony between the objects and the picture and bringing about very unusual visual sensations. The Air-dried Bamboo Shoots is just a case in point, where the bamboo roots, leaves, trunks, strips and sackcloth are pasted on the painting, and the air-dried bamboo shoots are used as a base to achieve the effect of the relief, whose texture beauty, both impressive and modern, intensifies the force of the works.

Out of his indulgence in classic transparent paintings and addiction to the beauty of materials, Zhou Rongqing finds that the material of the lacquer painting shares a lot in common with the classic transparent oil painting, namely, the ground color can be seen under the different oil layers, producing different shades of color to the eye due to the different powers of refraction. Generally speaking the natural resin paint is elegant and noble, and the various materials used by lacquer painting, say, gold foil, silver foil and the egg shell add to the magnificence of the works. In the recent years Zhou Rongqing has produced considerable lacquer painting works. He inquired intensively into the senior lacquer artists, learned a lot about the ways to use the natural resin paints, and integrated his oil painting knowledge and skills as well as the material techniques into the creation of lacquer painting. The procedures of lacquer painting are complicated, painstaking, and time-energy consuming, but the pursuit for the beauty of materials push him to go ahead. Especially in the final procedure, when he has to polish the painting with his hands, it seems to him that his spirit is being transmitted to the works and the works become gradually clearer to him. There is no wonder that he, in just one and two years, has produced scores of works and won the Fujian Provincial Art Award.

The process to pursue the beauty of materials is also the process the artist conquering the materials. As “the materials of art restrict the form of art, while the technique to master the material restricts the style of art”, Zhou Rongqing has his material and techniques in both oil painting and lacquer painting, exhibiting his own style though at the early stage. But it will surely go to maturity with his diligence and perseverance. I am looking forward to more of his works.

Lin Zhiyao,
Professor of Art Academy, Fujian Normal University
Postgraduate mentor
Vice Chairman of Art Research Institute, FNU,
Member of China Artists Association
Executive of Fujian Art Association