Ni Zan Rongxi Studio

Ni Zan Rongxi Studio is an arts education community in China that provides classes and events for students and adults interested in painting, drawing, calligraphy, music, and other related arts. The painting Rongxi Studio, by Ni Zan, is a landscape depicting the autumn scenery in Northern China. It has a wide range of colors and employs minimalism to create the effect viewers feel as if they are present in the cascading leaves.

The painting is based on Ni Zans recollection of his view from his studio window. As he wanted to depict seasonal beauty, he used bright colors to express this idea(Ione, 2017). The pear trees and maples are all surrounded by red leaves as they change color, thus, creating a sense that everything is heading towards death. Even the winds little grey and yellow feathers are smaller than their originals.

Ni Zan made use of his childhood experiences to create the painting. To depict the characters emotions, he included a variety of brush strokes and lines in his composition. He also copied a tiny mirror on top of a poplar tree and placed it in the bottom-right corner to focus on his studio while painting this piece.

This mirror reflected light onto his face and gave him the courage to continue working on such an emotionally intense piece. Therefore, this paper analyses how Ni Zan Rongxi Studio uses painting to communicate the message of Chinese culture and heritage. By tapping into Chinese cultures rich history, Ni Zan Studio strives to promote a better understanding of this fascinating country through its art form.

Ni Zans Rongxi Studio painting

Ni Zan was inspired by Shao Yong, who had written about the pleasure of painting and the life of creating. Although Shao Yong did not practice painting himself, he wanted to experience the bliss of art creation by having artists work in his home and inviting painters to visit him. These visits were recorded in writing by Shao Yongs student Liu Yuyi (Najung, 2018). These writings were influential for Ni Zan and his contemporaries; they expressed their love for painting and other art forms.

Ni Zan created many paintings that dealt with old themes, such as landscapes or flowers. He also made paintings of scenes from the stories of the Chinese Warring States (Najung, 2018). He eventually abandoned these themes that others had already rendered, painted flowers or people in idyllic scenes, or painted many subjects of little interest to others.

Ni Zans painting attracted many followers, with some schools specializing in his style and other artists emulating his works. Examples include Fang Yuhe, Fan Hoi, Zhu Shilin, and Zhang Yongfa. Ni Zan was one of the few artists who could paint well with brushes and ink. He also enjoyed copying calligraphy styles in Quanzhou, such as Zhou Shaoyi.

Ni Zans paintings were created using different types of ink at other times. He sometimes used ink from stone pears or tree chestnuts, which were difficult to obtain. Sometimes his work was done on paper yellowish in color; he used this paper for paintings intended for decoration or for writing on the back of his paintings with words of advice.

He also used paper gold in color, with the back of the paper being used as a gold-colored background. Although he painted in Quanzhou around the same time as his contemporary Shitao, Ni Zans style is very different (Yang, 2020). In...

Ni Zan continued to improve his painting style. He worked on many canvases with subjects ranging from landscapes and human figures to animals, trees, flowers, and insects (Li, 2020). His style was trendy, and he continued to develop himself as an artist and added some small personal touches here and there.

An example is his bamboo flute and empty pavilion lying on its side and the table beside him. History of Ni Zans Rongxi Studio two inscriptions was that in the painting, there is a poem called Rongxi Studio, written by Ni Zan (Naren., 2022). The author represented himself in the image as a poet, which is why so many people mistook it for a self-portrait. Ni Zans poetry is heavily associated with the story of Zhong Kui, and Rongxi Studio seemed to be an allegory for what he did with his life as a painter.

Another inscription on Ni Zans Rongxi Studio painting was found on the side of the image. The paint has been removed; the wall is still here. People who lived in Rongxi Studio had been forced by their landlord to leave before completing their housework (Xizhi, 2017).

In conclusion, Ni Zans painting style is, at the time but not one specific style of painting. It has a sense of the scale of Western painting and Chinese painting painted with a brush. It is like a combination of both. The most obvious element is the etching in his paintings, which Western painters often use to add contou.

However, Ni Zan used this technique to make his images more realistic and expressive. However, one can tell that the shape he drew was not like the western painters. They were concerned with good balance or symmetry, while Ni Zans work was more…