Artist finds power in poems and paintings

For Yan Zhen, colors and forms are a nonverbal way for poetic expression, and he has gotten comfortable switching between his identities as a poet and a painter.

"I just follow my heart and try to find the right language to express my feelings," says the artist, 84, at the reception for his exhibition held recently at a Beijing gallery.

Invited by John William Ashe, president of the United Nations General Assembly, Yan is going to stage a solo exhibition during the 69th General Assembly this September.

The exhibition, called China in Ink, features 18 ink paintings he created over the past few years. It's organized by Peking Peking Gallery and sponsored by the Global Sustainable Development Foundation.

Yan was recognized as one of the five outstanding young poets in the 1950s for his romantic lyrical poetry. His works include one of the longest Chinese narrative poems, Mountain Allies.

Yan has credited his passion for poetry to his childhood influence from his father, who was a primary school teacher.

While he was working in rural Anhui province in the 1950s, Yan made his first attempt at poetic writing. It was a long poem dedicated to a local farmer. However, he was not confident enough to share it publicly and kept it to himself for months.

It wasn't until he received a publication notice from a national literary magazine that he knew his wife had secretly contributed his poem to publication.

"That led me onto the way of literature," Yan recalls.

As Yan gained fame, he was even recommended to Chairman Mao Zedong by Zang Kejia, a famous poet.

Since then, he has published more than 40 poems, and some of them have been translated into foreign languages including English.

Yan began to paint in his early 40s, which, he says, was a natural step.

"I felt that I had some feelings that were more proper to express with water ink, though I had no particular thing in mind to paint about."

Over the years, Yan has explored mediums from ink to oil. His paintings have been exhibited both at home and abroad, and are collected internationally.

Yan's paintings blend traditional Chinese culture with contemporary culture, and combine colors and lines to create poetic images. He often depicts an imagined world and draws inspiration from traditional Chinese culture.

Once he painted traditional buildings in Huizhou, a historical region in southeastern China. Against the overall gray tone, he included a bright crescent moon in the sky. But its reflection in the water is a full moon, which in Chinese culture is symbolic of family reunion.

"Reality and dreams are often different," he explains.

This painting turned out to be an interpretation of the inner world of local women, who longed for reunions with their husbands. Businessmen from Huizhou are famous for often traveling all over the country for business, leaving their wives and families at home.

Most of his paintings fall into the abstract style. Yan says he believes abstracts "have unsurpassed beauty and are a better tool to express the spiritual world".

Meanwhile, he has fully exploited the agile nature of ink painting to express his poetic feelings, as he did in works for the upcoming show.

"In the spiritual world, I am as free as the water ink," says Yan.

For him, it has been a benefit rather than a loss that he didn't receive any formal education in art.

"I was like a blank paper. So I had few scruples and confinements," he says.

liuxiangrui@chinadaily.com.cn