老男人 2017

Wang Xinfu made this painting, titled 老男人, with generous amounts of oil paint. I can imagine him building up the surface, one thick dab at a time, as the figure slowly emerges from the abstract swirl. The blues and whites around the seated figure feel like clouds, or maybe waves crashing around some rocks. The old man himself is formed of browns, ochres, and reds, thick impasto strokes which give a kind of raw vulnerability. I wonder if Wang Xinfu was thinking about earlier painters like Rembrandt, maybe even Cezanne, who were both so interested in the human form. This old man has a similar weight, a sense of a life lived. But while we can read sadness, acceptance, or even defiance, it’s the paint itself which does the real talking, communicating what can't be said in words. It shows us how artists are in an ongoing conversation across time, inspiring one another’s creativity.