Chinese Artist Gaopeng Pan Visits William Paterson University

March 20, 2018 — April 03, 2018

Invited by CCART, Mr. Gaopeng Pan, the Shanghai William Chinese Art Foundation distinguished visiting artist, visited William Paterson University from March 20 to April 3, 2018. During his visit, Mr. Pan met with Professor Daryl J. Moore the Dean of College of the Arts and Communication of William Paterson University; he also met with the Honorary Directors of the Center for Chinese Art, Ms. Margaret Lam, Mr. David Yen, and Mr. Ip-Wing Kong. Mr. Gaopeng Pan held a successful solo exhibition along with a lecture during his visit.

On March 23, “The Heart Explains Everything- Chinese Paintings Exhibition by Gaopeng Pan” opened successfully at The New York Gallery of Chinese Art. The exhibition was co-organized by The Center for Chinese Art at William Paterson University, the New York Gallery of Chinese Art, Jiangsu Chinese Culture Promotion Society, and Taizhou University. Mr. Pan’s artworks were highly appreciated and praised, along with Mr. Kong’s passion and support for promoting Chinese art and his founding of the New York Gallery of Chinese Art. Amongst the distinguished guests and many visitors from New York and New Jersey were friends from other states and foreign visitors. They all appreciated the Chinese paintings with much praise.

On March 28, a lecture and demonstration of “Gaopeng Pan and his Chinese Landscape Painting” was held at William Paterson University at 2 p.m. at Power Art Center. Mr. Pan talked about his experience as a Chinese painter. He emphasized that to create a Chinese ink painting, the artist must know the landscape by heart. The artist observes nature and then paints his own free interpretation onto the paper together with his own understanding of philosophy and esthetics. Mr. Pan believes that an artist’s artistic attainment and calligraphy quality are the determining factors for his Chinese landscape paintings. For the demonstration, he painted without any draft, followed his own rules and used techniques freely. He used brush stokes to pour, sketch, rub and dot based on the dryness and intensity of the ink, to form this rhythmic, subtle yet powerful painting of clouds and mountains. Art teachers and students were thrilled to have the opportunity to observe the whole landscape painting process.

Gaopeng Pan is a well-known Chinese landscape painter, a Class-A National Artist and member of the Chinese Artists Association. He worked as editor and journalist at the Xinhua News Group for a very long time. He has received the Golden Award at The Grand Jiangsu Landscape Paintings Exhibition, and his works are permanently collected by Jiangsu Art Museum and the National Art Museum of China. Pan graduated in 1966 from Nanjing Art Institute, which follows the East-West pedagogical philosophy of its precursor Shanghai Fine Arts School founded by Liu Haishu, with a school motto of “Comprehensiveness, Intensiveness, Profoundness and Completeness” by Yuanpei Cai. The combined education has thus fostered his position of not clinging to only one technique or theory and trained him with a solid art foundation. Mr. Pan gets his inspiration from nature and interprets everything with his heart. His paintings strengthen two dimensional compositions, explore the concept of mid-view and distant-view to extreme perfection in practice. He always uses bright and elegant colors for his ink paintings that have become his signature style. More importantly, he paints with philosophical and esthetical perspectives, depicting his study of internal psychological space.

As the curator and organizer of this exhibition, Professor Zhiyuan Cong announced that Mr. Gaopeng Pan’s exhibition is the third collaborative veture between The New York Gallery of Chinese Art and the Center for Chinese Art at William Paterson University. Following the “Ink Painting from the East” and “Soul of Han-Han Carved Stone from Tengzhou China,” more wonderful art exhibitions await to be shown soon.