Charlie Tong and Wild China
061211 / 0 COMMENTS
I was recently privileged enough to go to a free demo by Charlie Tong, a master oil painter originally from north west China but now living in Australia. Admittedly it was a blatant plug for a tour to southern China for both artists and photographers that Charlie and his friends run, but I weighed it up, and a free demo is a free demo. I was really happy that there was absolutely no pressure to sign up and the demo was pleasingly complimented by a professional quality photography display and a slideshow presentation about the wilds of southern China, showing a taster of the area. I began to imagine myself sitting on a bamboo gondola striking off up the Li River with the lofty tooth-sharp misty mountains of a pristine landscape as a backdrop or being privvy to a quiet ancient card game with elderly weary worn locals with faces any artist would covet a chance to paint. (To see a little of what I mean about this region check out the inspiring documentary Wild China - particularly the fishing cormorants!).
But what did Charlie teach me about art? When we arrived, he had a landscape in progress, albeit upside down on the easel, but my heart leapt as he grabbed a goodsize handyman paintbrush and lashed into the canvas with a rich dark almost indigo blue-black and mapped out a triangular design right over the top of something which, even in its half finished state, I would have happily hung on my wall.
Within minutes he had blocked in a “people” landscape (the board would have been roughly a metre square). Then appearing magically, a small girl kneeling and two other characters behind her. Predominantly using a palette knife and broad brushes (mostly 2-3inch) makes this style of art more “chunky” with outlines merely suggested – a quality Charlie seeks quite intentionally. There is no hint of tight photo realism here. Copious amounts of thick bright paint on his palette are exciting in their own way and Charlie is a colour master: mixing both on the palette and on the artwork, often leaving the brush loaded with various colours for scintillating effect. Warm and cool also push and pull the viewer’s eye.
After only 40 or so minutes he had created a visually exciting juxtaposition of colour complementaries and to use his own most repeated word, value. Although quietly spoken, it was clear Charlie was enthralled by the process and he paints happily but religiously every day. It was reminiscent of a confident John Dudley demo that I went to a few years ago in which the extraordinary blotches and daubs up close, delight from a distance allowing the eye to make the landscape and showing great attention to detail were there is apparently none. Charlie works from thumb nail sketches and imagination (no photographic reference in sight) and the clear excitement of colour and shape positively exude out of the support tantalizing the senses. Inspirational stuff!! The demo left me in awe and wondering whether some of this is the true essence of “real” art?