The first impression I got from Yuhua Wang’s painting is the beauty in serenity.The figures sitting or standing,quietly and subtly convey a peaceful and serene beauty from the heart. Each character looks like statue, perhaps this is the sense of sculptural which can be long-lasting gazed. During Germany enlightenment period the esthetician Winckelmann once took “ noble simplicity and serene greatness”as the highest ideal of art, which is obtained from the ancient Greek sculptures.To find the simplicity and serene in painting, so as to achieve the charm standing in the long-lasting gaze, needs to get an inner strength in character modeling.
 
At this point, Yuhua Wang has her own excellent. And her paintings remind me of two western artists, Egon Schiller and Marlene Dumas, although her works lack the penetrating power of the painting structure as Schiller made, and the ability of accurately grasping the sensual image as Dumas did, but it can be seen that her unique understanding of the shape and the ability of her image perception converge towards this direction. Since she focuses on conveying the charm of the shapes and the unique feeling the images give her, so She seeks to present a person’s spiritual outlook in the most essential meaning.

The second impression I got from Yuhua’s painting is the subtle ink taste. Her paintings are mainly painted on linens, and mostly use the mineral pigments, sometimes also use the gold foils and the silver foils. Therefore her painting is not evolved from the system of the Chinese traditional ink painting, she takes her works as the“mixed media”paintings. But her comprehensive presentation of the materials shows a pure sense of “the traditional ink and water painting”, or “ink taste”. Thus, we have a problem in the classification, her works are attributed to the concept of ink painting?

To artist, this is a meaningless question, what medium and how to paint, it completely depend on the personal preference, this is not the matter which the artist should consider. But it is an inevitable issue to curator and critic. Though blurring the boundaries of different mediums of paintings is a common phenomenon in the contemporary art, and even a feature of contemporary art, but only through classifying them the new problem will be discovered possibly, and the criteria for the classification will change accordingly. In an article once I described the contemporary feature of the transformation of the traditional ink painting: “since 1980s the traditional ink painting experienced the difficult modern transformation, has shown its strong vitality and prospects. This is an indisputable fact of the new ink painting modernized. During the process, I particularly noticed that some contemporary artists who work with other art medias echo us in distance, in the effort of reinvigorating the traditional art , we formed “the collaboration inside and outside“. At the point of the traditional culture and the spirit of the ink art, though they come from the different ways, but towards the consistent direction. One way is to break out from “the inner of the traditional ink art,” another way is to gather from the art medias which are “outside of the world of the traditional ink art”, thereby both together formed the trend of “collaboration inside and outside. This “collaboration” have four dimensions: involving into the contemporary, activating the traditional, switching the media and the ultimate ontology.

From this perspective to study the paintings of Yuhua Wang, there is no doubt that she creates her art by the way of “switching the media”. Although the materials of media is no longer confined to the original bushes, ink and the Chinese papers, but the spirit of the traditional ink art is still there and the ink taste still exist. Therefore, the art of Yuhua Wang is not only attributed to the range of the ink art, but also in the sense of media, provides the new possibility of exploring the way for the traditional ink art to be the contemporary art.

The painting of Yuhua Wang is full of the flavor of the traditional ink art, but it is made not depending on the permeability of the Chinese paper and the unrestricted haphazard grasp . The delicate taste of the ink and water in the painting is under her effective control. A good singer does not make voice screeching, the higher the better, instead the sound can be controlled appropriately according to emotional needs. Painting is no exception, so called the splashing ink style of Chinese painting,the fast drawing calligraphy, the freehand style of Chinese painting , are not in any unrestrained shows of lacking ability of control , on the contrary, the highest level of the frenetic and free is in the appropriate grasp. This is so called “knowing when to stop”. Yuhua Wang’s ink taste just represents her excellent artistic accomplishment and the ability of effectively controlling the image.Wang Yuhua's works also retain some character of academy , if making some progress on the “involving into the contemporary”, there will be the possibility of her works being further promoted.