内容提要
一位画家在他的艺术生涯中总会在风格上有几次蜕变，而每一次蜕变实质上是画家对其追求目标的修正和深入，使自己的艺术得到升华。当我看到新加坡华裔艺术家范少华的作品时，就有这样的感觉。
范少华原籍广东，生于广州市，十岁时，跟随卢延光老师学习中国水墨人物、花鸟画。文革结束后，先后在广州美术学院附中、本科学习油画，毕业后进入广东电视台担任舞美设计，后又调入广州大学设计系任教。这期间，他创作、展出和发表了大量的油画、水彩画、连环画、插图作品，不少作品还入选七届全国美展等全国性展览。1990年，范少华移民新加坡，在艺术创作上开始以新加坡的都市生活为题材，并且积极参与当地的各项艺术展览，获得过各类奖牌。他还以新加坡艺术家的身份参加了与马来西亚、日本、法国、韩国、美国等国的美术交流。2007年，范少华回到家乡，在广东美术馆举办个展，好评如潮。今年初，他移师上海美术馆亮相他的一批油画作品，诚意与上海的同行切磋技艺。
范少华在广州美院附中和本科的七年绘画学习中，在创作观念上接受的是现实主义，在艺术表现上接受的是写实主义，由此打下了扎实的绘画基础。这使得他在表现新加坡的城市生活时，特别是在描绘有众多人物的场景时游刃有余，在对人物与人物、人物与景物之间的关系处理上体现出他对大场面的有效的掌控能力，画面的生活气息极为浓郁。照理说，范少华完全可以从这条路上继续走下去。但是，从1999年起，一种新的画风开始露面。他以独特的视角对人物作切割式的局部描绘，画面中的不完整的人物形体看似是随意摄取的、毫无意义的，但却是当代都市人生活中时尚、匆忙、无奈的真实写照。这类作品无论在创作构思，还是在构图布局、色彩色调上，都与他过去的作品面貌截然不同，个人风格十分鲜明，极富现代感。这可以说是画家试图在艺术表现上建立起自己的面貌的一种大胆作为。
几年以后，范少华又以一种新的尝试出现在他的荷花系列画上。荷花在中国传统花鸟画中，往往带有其特定的象征意义，是一种清高、洁身自好的人格象征。范少华在他的荷花系列画中，将西洋油画的写实描绘转变为中国水墨的写意表现，着意于对水墨韵味的抒发，同时又融入西方现代绘画的抽象因素，以及在背景中揉合了褶皱的肌理效果，赋予了他的荷花画与众不同的艺术趣味。荷花在这里改变了它们原先的文静、自闭的性格，而转化为一种充满激情的主动的姿态。
范少华在最近的新作中，又将女人体与荷花画在一起。我认为这不是简单地将两种图像混合在一起，而是在将中西两种不同的文化进行碰撞与对话。当具有感官性审美的女人体与富有精神性品格的荷花结合在一起时，内中的含意不但是多重性的，而且在文化指向上是深刻的。至此，范少华将他绘画经历中的人物画与花卉两大部分合而为一了。这也许是范少华在当代艺术发展背景下对油画创作所作出的一种思考性的表达。（文章来源：《华慧·人间Ⅱ---范少华的绘画艺术》）
FOREWORD
In the life of an artist, there are bound to be changes in his or her painting styles. When a change takes place, the artist is really seeking to go deeper or make further adjustments towards a goal that will help to raise his or her level of artistic excellence. This was how I felt when I saw the works of Chinese Singaporean painter Fan Shaohua.
Fan Shaohua was born in the city of Guangzhou and he is a native of Guangdong province in China. When he was 10, he studied Chinese ink painting on the human figure, birds and flowers under the master Lu Yanguang.
After the Chinese Cultural Revolution, he went to the secondary school of the Guangzhou Art Academy first before studying oil painting in the academy. After graduation, he worked briefly as a designer for dance at the Guangdong Television Station. Later, he moved to Guangzhou University where he taught art and design.
During this period, he started to create and showed many of his works in oil and watercolor as well as some of his illustrations and even comics at public exhibitions. Several of his works were selected for the Seventh National Art Exhibition that went round the country.
In 1990, he migrated to Singapore. Since then, subjects on modern city living in Singapore started to appear in his works. He has been very active in the art scene there and won many prizes. He also represented Singapore in art exchange programs with several countries. They included Malaysia, Japan, France, Korea, and the United States.
In 2001, he returned to his hometown where he staged a solo exhibition at his alma mater, Guangzhou Art Academy, and received rave reviews. This new year, he is showing some of his works in oil at the Shanghai Art Museum, sincerely wanting to share his art with his counterparts in Shanghai.
In the seven years he was at the secondary school of the Guangzhou Art Academy and later during his graduate studies at the academy, he was trained to apply realism to his creative ideas and representational art in his artistic expression. Thus, he was equipped with a strong foundation in painting techniques.
With his skills, he could paint large compositions with no difficulties and yet able to express the liveliness and richness of the textures on the canvas, especially in his works on modern Singapore where many people and buildings appear together. He was able to treat relationships among human characters, and between human characters and their surroundings very well.
Actually, Fan Shaohua could have continued to work on this artistic path. But from 1999 onwards, he embarked on a new painting style.
He looked at the human figure with a new and unique perspective, cut it up and paint it section by section. Initially, the incomplete human figures looked like they were painted casually and appeared to be meaningless. But on carefully examination, they actually showed the characteristics and trends in modern living, such as the city folks’ daily mad rush or helplessness.
These new style of painting were vastly different from those of his past, whether in their creative ideas, compositions or the use of colors. His individual style was very distinct, and the new paintings also looked very modern. It was certainly a bold attempt by the artist to establish a distinctive painting style of his own.
A few years later, Fan Shaohua tried another new painting techniques in his Lotus series. The lotus has special significance in the traditional Chinese painting of flowers and birds. It represents a certain aloofness and purity of character, among other qualities.
In Fan Shaohua’s Lotus series, he turned the representational art painting technique of the West into free-hand brush strokes in Chinese ink and brush painting which often uses the degree of concentration of the ink on paper as a means of expression. To give a Western flavor to his works, he painted the background with a crumbled-paper look, making his pictures of the lotus to be so artistically distinctive.
The lotus in his works also changed from their usual quiet and aloof nature to be so full of life and passion.
In Fan Shaohua’s recent works, he painted the female figure together with the lotus. I don’t think it is just a simple act of putting two different subjects side by side. More than that, he was really making a contrast between the East and the West, two subjects from different cultures, and trying to create a dialogue between them.
When you put the sensuous and beautiful body of a woman together with the lotus, the significance could be multiple and many sided. Culturally, they also have great meanings.
Fan Shaohua has put his human figures he painted for years together with the lotus. This is perhaps his thoughtful expression of the place oil painting should be in the development of modern art today.
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