Artist: Ting Shao Kuang (b. 1939)
Born in 1939, the year of the rabbit, Mr Ting Shao Guang (丁紹光), a Chinese figurative painter and printmaker, shares many similar characteristics as the gentle creature. Mr Ting spent his early childhood in Chengdu County, China, and grew up in a period of war and resistance. Between 1939 and 1949, China was embroiled in the violent Sino-Japanese War followed by immediate internal political clashes that culminated into a civil war. In this turbulent period, civilians struggled to trust one another or to find security in their communities. At the young age of 9, Mr Ting was abandoned by his parents and turned to painting to express his sorrows and loneliness. This shattered childhood innocence compounded by the post-war atmosphere of destruction, loss, and continued unrest may have developed a sensitive yet resilient streak within him that would shape his artist choices in his later years.
During his enrolment at the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts in Beijing in 1957, Mr Ting studied renowned Western artists such as Matisse, Picasso and Modigliani, who became great inspirations to him. This introduction to vastly different art movements and techniques, like a pebble tossed into a pond, created ripples within the artistic mind of Mr Ting who had mostly encountered traditional Chinese styles of art. In particular, he would infuse his traditional Chinese style artworks with bold colours drawn from Western art styles, very much a result of his heritage and life experiences. This would mark the beginnings of a star to be born.
In his student years, Mr Ting also had a memorable and even life-changing encounter with a beautiful female during his expedition to Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture (西双版纳傣族自治州) for his final year art project. Many art critics and appreciators have observed the consistent feature of a female figure surrounded by vibrant abstractions in many of Mr Ting’s art pieces. While the mutual admiration was platonic and strictly non-physical, this Juno-like figure and the distinct cultural zone may have served as a lifelong inspiration for Mr Ting who was best known for his serigraph works, which often featured the female form expressed in a mix of traditional Chinese and Western influences.
Distant Dreams (1988)
Mr Ting Shao Guang’s paintings are highly stylised with references to Ancient Egyptian and Art Nouveau aesthetics. In Distant Dreams, a lady gazes into the distance with a pensive expression, her hand resting on her chin as she is deep in thought. Behind her is a boat with a raised mast that is stopped at the harbour and floating on sapphire waters. In the wind, the woman’s raven hair flows freely and blows towards the open sea. It is as if her hair is reaching out to embrace a distant lover, or as if she were being pulled towards a glorious destiny that awaits her across the sea. The viewer feels an unexplainable emptiness within them and desires to know more about the solitary female. She is alone, but is she lonely? Is she thinking, or is she waiting? Who or what is in the distance or that she dreams of? There are no explanations by the artist and from this suspense arises a void of loss as art appreciators feel deprived of a resolution.
Meanwhile, as a young man, Mr Ting again found himself surrounded by revolution, political upheaval and control. Upon graduation, he moved to Kunming and taught at the Yunnan Art Institute there where he would continue to paint during his free time but burned them upon completion to avoid being caught by the authorities for his abstract style. Eventually, Mr Ting’s defiance of state rules was discovered, and he was forced to leave in order to evade capture. He escaped to the monasteries in northern China, and it was there that he studied the cave paintings that had been preserved for centuries on the old Silk Route. In 1968, he returned to Kunming, keeping a low profile, until the death of Mao Zedong. He and his colleagues then formed the Yunnan Shen She Art Association whereupon he was commissioned to paint a mural in the Great Hall of the People that would bring him immense national fame and reverence by the Chinese authorities.
However, with the spirit of a wild rabbit that desires to sprint across the grassy field, Mr Ting Shao Guang migrated to Los Angeles, California in 1979 for complete artistic freedom, and has earned great success since. He was even commissioned by the American and Chinese governments and organisations within the United Nations, being the first Asian artist to gain such international recognition.
The viewer soon realises uncanny parallels between Mr Ting’s evolving circumstances and the lady in Distant Dreams. As Simone De Beauvoir once claimed that Woman is the Other in a patriarchal world, Mr Ting was the Other in a political landscape that suppressed dissenting views and ‘deviant’ behaviours. Likewise, as the female in Distant Dreams may be interpreted either as drawing someone towards her or being pulled towards the sea by something, Mr Ting also drew from other cultures and was pushed towards the global stage where he demonstrated a greater artistic purpose.
The title too may present a personal paradox- the Chinese artist’s dreams for recognition and creative expression may have been fully ‘realised’ when he was abroad, nevertheless, the true dream for appreciation of the artworks’ underlying messages of peace and introspection may have been subverted with its commodification. As we peer out to faraway lands with promised fortunes, we may miss the riches of looking inwards and discovering ourselves.
Blue Diamond (1989)
In Blue Diamond, Mr Ting’s skilful combination of contemporary and traditional Western and Asian artistic styles and methods is prominently displayed. Clothed in an azure blue Sari, a woman sits with a basket and pot beside her. The artist’s admirable attention to detail is evident in the creamy white pearls that dangle from the regal female’s neck and the touch of matching blue shadow to the eyelids. In the background, Hindu deities are meticulously depicted and primarily coloured in red or saffron. In Hinduism, red symbolises sensuality and purity while saffron is the sacred colour to the religion. Rarely do we find a Chinese artist as prestigious as Mr Ting Shao Guang who engages in non-Chinese South Asian art with a historical or cultural significance as precious as the rarest diamonds. With his touch, South Asian cultures and the Hindu religion may garner greater attention or renewed interests in other communities. There is thus much to be learnt from Mr Ting’s adventurous spirit and his willingness to explore unfamiliar territory in a sensitive and nuanced way.
Return to Nature (1989)
In Return to Nature, viewers are presented with an ethnically ambiguous lady with her face tilted towards the sky. Interestingly, her eyes are shut, and her one hand clasps her chest with an exposed breast. This nudity, as with her bare foot, is not perceived as erotic but instead as an unconscious exposure of the human body that is attuned to the surrounding Nature. As with his other artworks, blue is used heavily and as a substitute for green in depictions of the Palm tree leaves. There may be several connotations to the colour blue that the artist wishes to convey - the healing quality and tranquillity of Nature; the beauty and spirituality of the natural world, and the melancholy towards its desecration; the stability that Nature provides and how the soil unites people from across the Earth. Return to Nature may be Mr Ting’s plea to the protection of our planet and for individuals to (temporarily) break away from our urban lives.
In its entirety, the imagery that threads Mr Ting’s pieces together, like that of many other creative minds, is of Woman, as even Nature is commonly described in feminine terms. As bearers of life and the Other to males, females typically symbolise fertility, elegance, love, and mysticism. Mr Ting’s portrayal of Woman as eternally youthful and barefoot may hint to their vitality that encapsulates vulnerability. By placing a single female who is always the focus at the centre of the picture, the audience is reminded of the indispensability and nobility of Women. At the same time, we only ever see the female’s side profile and never her full face. This concealment of her identity thereby heightens the mystery of the painting. Alternatively, it may be read as a warning against the sanctification of Women who are placed on an artistic pedestal that prevents their mortal complexities from being understood. After all, Man and Woman are essentially human.
The universal themes of motherhood, love, peace, and harmony that Mr Ting bases his paintings on reflect his ideal for art as an eternal that would transcend time and space. As spoken in The Arabian Nights (1885), “[a] truth once seen by a single mind ends up by imposing itself on the totality of human consciousness.” Mr Ting’s visionary style erodes the boundaries between Western and Eastern art to produce works that resonate with the world.
