A bamboo section comes to life as brush painter Truong Han Minh deploys Chinese-ink in his studio in HCMC

“I’m a mere painter. Each artist has his own style. Maybe many can relate to my style, so they love my work,” Truong Han Minh says modestly when called a master of Vietnamese brush painting.

“It takes at least 10 years to master the art. Experience is very important, but it isn’t everything. An artist can create strikingly beautiful paintings even with their eyes closed, but the paintings are worthless if they don’t put in all their heart and soul.”

Minh believes that apart from ceaseless passion and outstanding artistic skills, fate has a hand to play in someone devoting a lifetime to an art.

“Brush paintings are not difficult to create, but only the ones with their own, delicately nuanced soul stand out.”

The veteran artist, whose works have captivated people for the past 30 years, says: “The most difficult thing in doing brush paintings is capturing the soul of the subjects. Each painting is the result of a surge of overwhelming emotion and no two strokes are exactly the same.

“Nature is very rich. An artist must have aesthetic eyes to present its beauty to spectators.”

Brush paintings, which originated in China, are created with Chinese ink on xuyen chi paper - a very thin, absorbent paper which is used specifically for this art, and is imported from China, Japan or Taiwan. They are also done on silk.

The usual topics are landscapes, trees, flowers, animals and people, representing our closeness to nature. The joys and sorrows that everyone goes through are depicted with short poems in the paintings.

The palette in traditional Chinese brush paintings are often monochrome black and white and their themes are limited to scenic landscape, flowers, birds and fish.

Minh’s modern brush paintings, however, are colorfully evocative of Vietnamese images, like the mangroves in the southernmost province of Ca Mau, red-headed cranes in the Mekong Delta province of Dong Thap, Guom (Sword) and Tay lakes in Hanoi and the Bay Tang (Seven tiered) waterfalls in the Central Highlands.

“Brush painters trained in different schools have different styles. I was trained in the Lingnan school (which originated from China’s Jiangnan province and innovatively blends Chinese traditional styles with modern western styles), so I leave plenty of blank spaces in my paintings so I don’t stifle viewers or hamper their imagination.

“A brush painter must breathe life into his work to make it last long. Brush paintings are not about non-existing landscapes distant from real life.”

Minh says the artist should also be able to see different aspects that animate his subjects. For instance, he says, he tries to bring out the softness and grace of the fiercest of animals. He points to a painting of a lion lying sprawled on a rock.

The beast looks imposing though it is not captured in a fearsome posture such as baring its fangs or stalking its prey.

Similarly, in another painting, Minh doesn’t portray an eagle mightily stretching its wings, but it still reflects the immense ground and sky in its astute eyes.

“This eagle can fly thousands of miles.”

It is not easy to catch the spirit of what one sees in a brush painting, because it is “different from other kinds of painting. The brush painter has to paint non-stop from start to finish with resolute, quick yet meticulous strokes, otherwise the ink won’t spread evenly.

“He/she has to visualize what to paint before actually starting. A seasoned artist also makes good use of the paper’s dark color and the way ink spreads to create vividly splendid paintings.”

According to Minh, as ink quickly spreads on the xuyen chi paper, the artist has to know how to control the flow of the ink so that a brush stroke can comprise seven different hues.

“One needs both experience and an innate gift to be able to do so,” says Minh, whose comment about being able to paint with eyes closed is more than a symbollic statement.

An early start

Minh was born into a Chinese family in 1951 in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City).

He began to paint before being able to write properly and he learned brush painting with a master of the Lingnan school as a teenager.

He taught painting for three years before quitting the job in 1982 to devote all his time to his life’s passion.

At 57, the deputy head of the Vietnam Fine Arts Association and head of the Chinese Fine Arts Association in HCMC, remains passionate about painting and continues to travel far and wide for inspiration for his artwork.

His house and studio at 444 Minh Phung Street in District 11 is brimming with brush paintings. His favorite theme is nature, and his renderings of phong (wind), thuy (water), truc (bamboo) and dieu (birds) are vivid and evocative.

He carefully keeps newspaper articles about him as “I must know what others think about me and my work in order to improve.”

He also treasures almost a dozen notebooks in which spectators at his exhibitions have jotted down their comments and feelings.

One of his treasures is a notebook given to him by one of his fans when he held an exhibition in Paris in 1992.

He has exhibited across the country and abroad and one of his paintings was ranked “The Chinese masterpiece.”

Minh has won several prizes locally and internationally including a prize at the 2006 International Brush Painting and Calligraphy Exhibition for a work titled Nhan (Patience).

The artist continues to be inspired by nature. He points to one of his favorite paintings of the terraced fields in northern Ha Giang Province.

“Only northern Vietnam is blessed with these magnificent terraced fields. Humans have given life to nature. Whenever I contemplate this painting, I feel the energy of burgeoning life bursting within me.”

Reported by Diem Thu