Huang Binhong’s works embrace his personal principles and views. As it is often said, the most important thing for a successful artist is his teacher – Huang Binhong indeed had a distinguished student of ink painting, Li Keran, which proved the saying of eminent teachers producing outstanding students. As for those who are self-taught, they mainly rely on observing ancient paintings to learn, but unfortunately this is only limited to those with exceptional talent. However, the most important thing is to experience nature firsthand. For example, when Song dynasty painter Jing Hao painted works on Mount Taihang, one should not just look at Jing Hao’s paintings, but make a trip to Mount Taihang itself to understand where the inspiration came from. Another example is Fan Ji Mountain Dwelling by Song-Yuan painter Huang Gongwang – one needs to visit Fanchuan River in person to carefully appreciate the arrangement of mountains and waters in the painting, and then use one’s own technique of “dissimilar resembling is most resembling” to complete the composition.
Just as in Dream of the Red Chamber, there is a famous quote “Taking the false as true, the true seems false; seeing through non-existence, existence disappears.” This means “when we take the false as true, the reality seems false as well; when we see through existence as empty, the real existence appears empty.” This line cleverly points out the illusoriness of life. Just as in Eastern philosophy, there is no absolute – even a blank white paper under a microscope would still appear with some black dots.