Culture> Art

Art of enlightenment

By Wang Hui ( China Daily ) Updated: 2014-06-08 07:32:13

From top: Huo shows his black bamboo work with Xing Jin (right), director of the University of Sydney Confucius Institute, and Yan Feng, her deputy. Huo holds a red bamboo painting with Geoff Withycombe (left), executive officer of the Sydney Coastal Council, and Kent Gao, director of the Association of Australia- China Small & Medium Enterprises. Huo paints an Australian parrot for the first time.

Portrait of artist

The head of the Department of Traditional Chinese Painting at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, Huo also supervises doctoral students at the Chinese National Academy of Arts in Beijing.

Born in 1946 in Qingyuan county, Hebei province, the renowned painter graduated from the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in 1969 and has been teaching traditional Chinese painting there ever since.

Among his many titles is vice-chairman of Tianjin Artists Association.

In 1997, he was selected as one of the top 100 Chinese painters by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles.

In recent years, Huo has been recognized as one of the country's best painters with traditional freehand brushwork that depicts flowers and birds.

His works portray the dreams of childhood, the magic of nature and the beauty of life.

Huo's works are displayed at celebrated museums and galleries in China including the Great Hall of the People, the Chinese Art Gallery and Diaoyutai National Guesthouse.

For years, he has been closely concentrating on the traditional Chinese philosophies : Taoism and Buddhism as well as the I-Ching, or Book of Changes.

He also absorbed a great deal from the Analects of Confucius during his career as a painter.

All these helped shape his understanding of traditional Chinese culture.

That night in Sydney, Huo poured out his distilled understanding of Chinese philosophies that he believes are still relevant to the cultivation of a great painter today.