The feelings of the earth ------ Liu Qiwei

........Liu Qiwei, a name is strange to the Mainland artists. So is to me. I did not see his works until the beginning of this year. At that time I was thinking that the works must have been from the hand of an active, humorous and outgoing painter, and later, to my surprise I was told that he is an elder of nearly 90 years of age.

Liu Qiwei has rich experience of life: in his early year, he studied in Japan majoring electric engineering, and then worked as a teacher, serviceman, engineer, professor of a research institute and forest policeman of a natural protection district. He used to travel around the world, and his footprints could be seen in Africa, South America, Oceania and different Island countries of the Southeast Asia. His real spiritual homelands are such places as mountain range, river, forest and swamp, where are far away from city noises; and his close friends living in there generation after generation are those birds, beasts, fish and insect. In years of his traveling life, he has seen by his own eyes the scenes of devastation --- the mystical and beautiful nature has been destroyed over and over by ignorant and selfish human being. While distressing to see it, he is determined to publicize the environmental protection by practical action. Besides exploring, investigating and authoring, he uses his painting brush to express his personal feelings for the environmental protection.

Liu Qiwei has not received any regular professional training from an academy of Fine Arts. He began to teach himself painting at the age of nearly 40. In half a century after 1950, he entered many exhibitions and held several times the personal exhibitions. At first he painted the watercolor and further on to the woodcut and lots of other integrated forms.

The subjects of Liu Qiwei's work mainly concern the image of the animals, also once in a while some figures, flowers etc., but various forms of animals are always his favorite, to which he has paid much more attention. From rhinoceros, zebra, giraffe, panda, peacock, parrot, trout, dolphin, frog to ladybug, the animals under his brush are always bearing vivid and humorous temperament and exuberant vitality. For modeling he often uses exaggerate method and for coloring he has much inclination to decorative style. Reviewing the ripe course of his artistic clue, we could find out on one hand the influence of such modern western art masters as Picaso, Clee，Milo and Ladon, on the other hand the nurture of the Chinese traditional folk arts. In fact, the years of traveling around the world led Liu Qiwei to get to know deeper about the primitive arts of different nationalities in the world. And the most primitive is to be the most modern. There has been a magic power in every stroke of Liu Qiwei’s brush. What seems to be made carelessly appears to be variegated in bright color and flickering in glistening shadow. The compound-material works made over these years have further showed up his ability of mastering the visual form. To get an effect of extraordinary bright, he either directly applies or dissolves the ordinary pigment in powder onto watercolor paper. Making his painting boldly, he also tries to use some materials that are not belonged to that of painting.
Liu Qiwei, nearly 90 years old, is either a plain naive painter or nature-loving poet. He protects with care the dream of art by transparent child-like eyes and soul, and guards with religious feelings the environment on which the human’s life depend.