Elegant, delicate style of Deng Suqiang evokes nature's pure spirit, Zhang Zhao and Wang Qi report.

Since ancient times, the works of most women painters in China have featured elegant and delicate styles that reflected their exquisite emotions and distinctive feelings about life.

This is true today for Deng Suqiang. She pursues a dreamlike artistic expression based on the Chinese gongbi paintings of flowers and birds while maintaining traditional techniques.

Gongbi is one of the two main categories of traditional Chinese paintings. It is characterized by fine brushwork with great attention to detail. The other genre xieyi features a freehand style of brushwork that expresses meaning and spirit.

Flowers and birds are among the most important subjects in Chinese traditional paintings.

"It is a combination of human and nature and an exchange of lives," she said. "It is aimed to create a harmonious world of lives in pursuit of the beauty of pure spirit."

With feminine emotions and instinctive understanding of life, Deng finds beauty in immensity, peace and devotion outside the flamboyant world. With her paintings filled with peaceful colors, she tries to show a dreamland of nature.

Deng said that many gongbi painters nowadays focus much more on painting skill than spirit. The result is that while their work is as realistic as a photograph, the humane elements that should have been seen in the paintings have faded.

In contrast she expresses the essence of gongbi conveying the overall sense. There are changes of curves in her brushwork in a full composition. The ink-color arrangement represents her understanding of force, rhythm and harmony.

In her paintings, the birds, butterflies, plants, rocks and buildings all show detailed but not redundant lines and colors, the result of her understanding of traditional culture as well as many years' practice.

One of her masterpieces, Peacock, uses the image of the peacock to form a diagonal composition naturally. The peacock, flowers, rocks and the sun are all lively and vivid, with sharp contrast of colors.

In another series of rock-themed sketches, she creates a sense of peace with light ink and colors, delicate structures and precise shapes.

Contact the writers through zhangzhao@chinadaily.com.cn.

(China Daily 03/02/2014 page10)