A painting by Chinese oil painting artist Huang Yue. [Photo/chinadaily.com.cn]

For over a millennium, Chinese artists have been using ink to express the beauty of flowers and birds. Artist Huang Yue has carried that tradition on, but uses a different medium – oil.

Flower and bird ink painting, a traditional art form that's unique to China, originated during the Tang Dynasty (618-907.) Since then, Chinese artists have expressed their emotions with gradations of mostly monochromatic strokes in ink, with scarce touches of color to accentuate. The manifestation differs greatly from those of Western oil paintings, where abundant colors and textures are used to create depth and abstractness.

Huang Yue's oil paintings of flowers and birds exists somewhere between the two. "My paintings are neither the traditional ink paintings of flowers and birds nor paintings of that under natural light in the West. It's somewhere in between. It's completely new, and innovation is the key for me."

More often than not, artists paint not just to capture the beauty of what they see, but use shapes and contours as metaphors to express their inner feelings and views of the world. So a flower, through an artist's eyes, is not just a flower. It can be the symbol of femininity, peace, optimism and beauty. Every stroke an artists paints is an expression of culture. When the message that lies behind is too deeply embedded in cultural traditions, audiences from other parts of the world may have difficulties understanding it.

"When we export our art to the world, these metamorphic artistic conceptions are sometimes not understood," Huang said.

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