Into the Garden: An Exhibition of Chinese Painting By Nina Sun

The Shanghai William Chinese Art Foundation Distinguished Visiting Artist Series

05/11/2019 – 05/21/2019
America Bank Gallery, 41-06 Main Street, Flushing, NYC
Monday-Sunday 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Hosted By

The Center for Chinese Art at William Paterson University

Exhibition

Opening Reception

05/11/2019, 2:00 - 4:00 p.m., at America Bank Gallery

Pure Ink Dyes the Forest Wind - Jin Ran and Her Paintings

By Zhiyuan Cong

Sun Nina, pen name Jin Ran, currently is an Associate Professor of Chinese painting at JiangSu Second Normal University in Nanjing and a visiting scholar at the Center for Chinese Art of William Paterson University.

Jin Ran has great reverence and deep love for ink painting. As a rare traveler among female artists, she often carries her traveling bags with paintings tools and walks all over the mountains and countryside in China. Taught by nature and the accompanying scenery, she freely moves her brushes and practices her ideals with great enthusiasm to expand her extraordinary creativity and understanding for ink art, with which she formed a unique painting style. Her pictures fully embody freshness, momentum, tranquility and elegance. Her landscape paintings evoke certain awe and respect for ink art.

Fu Baoshi (a Chinese painting master) said painting must have a personality at first then it can have a style. Jin Ranʼs paintings synchronize with her personality, like a cup of tea with simplicity and tranquility, freshness and nature that you can sit with pleasantly and taste slowly. At the same time, her paintings do not lack vigor and spice. When you engage in deep conversation with her, you feel the true Chinese northerner's forthright and extraordinary temperament in her. To some extent, her paintings are not only a general description but also a reflection of her charming personality, which is a remarkably independent character in the current full-of-confusion art criticism era. Employing simple and elegant ink makes Jin Ran a fresh spring in the complex context of modern ink painting and brings spiritual sublimation to the viewers. I believe this is the unique value offered to us by Jin Ranʼs paintings in the context of current ink painting.

— Zhiyuan Cong, Professor & Director, Center for Chinese Art at William Paterson University

05/10/19