Paint and ink are fluid. An artist can splash both about to great effect and the Chinese painter Reagan Lee (Li Nanfeng) certainly does so in his exhibition at the University of Auckland's Gus Fisher Gallery.
He uses a Western-sounding name and his given name to reflect his experience as an artist. Born and trained in China, he has worked in the Seychelles, Europe and, for some years, in New Zealand. The European influence is prominent in his work but as most of the painting is done on heavy scrolls of paper and in his use of black ink, he retains something of his Chinese heritage. Yet instead of the traditional delicacy that expresses, for example, the moods of the weather - the wind in bamboo conveyed by delicate touches - he uses big, broad swathes of intense black in action portraits.
A powerful example is a head of a grinning, gap-toothed man with the head defined not with the point of a small brush but with the fluid swish of a wide one. Inks both black and red are used dramatically as a wash over acrylic paint to establish the passionate mood of some of the paintings.
He says, "I can feel the flow of blood in nature; woe and joy are both active power." There is plenty of blood in Reagan Lee's work; his favourite colour is red. The gallery is dominated by two large paintings, one at each end. Both feature a red sun or moon. Summer, part of the Seasons of Life series, has a red sky swept by driven clouds and the ground is mostly red and yellow. The trees shown are stark black with few leaves but scattered with white blossoms, which begin to fall on the right of the painting. One of the trees has been cut down to a stump with two stubby branches, like a cross. The cross shape is used often throughout the show. Two paintings show children (male and female) on crosses that appear to symbolise the suffering they can expect from life. The artist himself is shown as a sunflower on a cross.
The big painting at the far end of the gallery, called Landscape with Crosses, is more optimistic than the sombre tone of the rest of the show. A vast hill confronts the sky adorned by a red sun and red clouds. Four anonymous figures hold out their arms in hope as they step from a cave with blossoming trees on the horizon. It is similar in conception and scope to large modern works by artists such as Anselm Kiefer though more conventionally dramatic.
