Blending The East And West

Zhao Fucai merges traditional Chinese techniques and Western realism in his dynamic watercolours

- Zhao Fucai

Watercolour paintings can be as objectively realistic as Western oil paintings, and they can express the same emotions as abstract traditional Chinese paintings. Watercolours fascinate me. When I drew, I would forget to eat and sleep.

I’ve enjoyed drawing since I was young. In my teens I attended art school and began to receive orthodox painting training. During this period, I did pencil sketches, oil painting, gouache paintings and Chinese traditional paintings. During my time at school, I painted oil landscapes almost every day. Training and practice gave me a solid art foundation. Later, I entered the China Academy of Art studies under some famous painters like Zhisheng He and Ziliang Cheng. The rigorous pedagogy and exquisite techniques of those senior artists have led me to improve my painting techniques. I benefited from those skills for the rest of my life. At that time, I had developed a strong interest in watercolours. Despite the heavy teaching workload after becoming a teacher at Hainan University, I did not allow myself to let go of the brush. It made me cherish the time I had to paint even more. After teaching my classes, I put almost all my free time into my watercolour paintings. The more time I spent on practice and experiment with watercolour, the more I grow to love it.

I enjoy outdoor activities and exploring new places. During my trip to Tibet last fall, I had to overcome the altitude sickness, but it gave me the opportunity to create several landscape sketches. Sketches release my artistic feelings, and their creation can allow me to think about the big picture. Many of my sketches turned into watercolour paintings in the end. My watercolour paintings represent the scenes in the natural world. They all have beautiful symbols. People are eager to find beauty in the busy modern life. I want to give viewers a glimpse of beauty from real life that I captured through my paintings.