過去四十年來，無數中國大陸的藝術家深受西方藝術風格與傳統的影響。這在1980年代初期極大地促進了他們在個人和集體上的成功，因為他們的藝術作品容易為西方觀眾所接受，在某種程度上也鞏固了國際藝術界對西方藝術形式優越性的認知。許多文化大革命（1966-1976）後的藝術家留在國內創作以適應變化的時代，但也有不少人遷居世界各地，以在更少政治與社會束縛的環境下建立自己的藝術身份。在1989年天安門事件後，又有更多藝術家選擇移民。

在過去的一個世紀中，東南亞，特別是新加坡和馬來西亞，被視為安全且友好的移民地，成為中國藝術家的重要目的地之一。廣州出生的藝術家范少華便是眾多在80年代末90年代初移民新加坡的中國藝術家之一。對他而言，遷居新加坡不僅意味著擺脫嚴苛的政治、社會和藝術限制，也意味著作為藝術家和教師在新文化與藝術生活中所面臨的挑戰。

范少華於1992年來到新加坡，當時他已經是一位成就非凡的畫家，而新加坡本身也正尋求在藝術發展上的新方向。南洋藝術學院自1938年以來已經存在，而拉薩爾藝術學院則在1984年才創立，當時正由雕塑家約瑟夫·麥克納利修士（1923-2002）帶領，努力打造自身作為藝術學院的身份。

范少華移居的新加坡，無疑並非一個缺乏藝術和藝術成就歷史的世界。相反，它已經培養出了一批享有聲譽的藝術家，其中包括先鋒現代藝術家如鍾泗賓（1917-1983）、劉抗（1911-2004）、陳文希（1906-1991）、和張荔英（1906-1993）。這些藝術家不論是個人還是集體，都在發展被稱為“南洋畫派”的藝術風格中扮演了重要角色，同時也是戰後初期新加坡和馬來西亞藝術家的導師。

他們的影響不僅體現在作為教師和導師的角色上，也體現在他們作為藝術家的經驗上，無論是在歐美的西方藝術，還是中國傳統藝術典籍方面。他們的影響至今仍隱隱回蕩在東南亞藝術界。

通過對新加坡先驅藝術家及其傳統的了解，范少華逐漸為自己闢出了一片作為藝術家和教師的令人矚目的天地，最近在南洋藝術學院舉辦的回顧展《藝道 · 中途》正見證了這一點。

范少華於1963年出生於廣州，1985年從廣州美術學院獲得美術學士學位，隨即開始在廣東華南藝術學院任教。1992年，范少華移居新加坡，他表示：「我喜歡這裡的多元文化社會，並且能夠欣賞來自世界各地的藝術形式，也從不同的繪畫流派和風格中學習。這對我來說是一個開闊眼界的體驗。」

在1992年至2002年間，范少華作為具象藝術家創作了許多傑出的作品。他透過肖像畫記錄了新加坡的當代歷史，描繪出各類人物的形象。從孩子的純真、普通工人的堅毅、不同年齡女性的風采到已故領袖李光耀（1923-2015）的堅定精神，范少華為他的寫實風格發展出獨特的表現手法。他指出，在創作肖像畫時，不僅要「能夠理解人體的結構、人物的姿態和外貌、光影的交錯運用以及冷暖色彩的運用，還必須深入觀察人物的個性和魅力，以及他的生活和人品。」

在范少華的回顧展中移步觀賞，可以清楚看出他是世界的敏銳觀察者。他的肖像畫僅僅是其中一個例子，而他的街景和繁忙的河流場景同樣突顯了他對這個城市國家和過去繁忙場景與現代整潔景象之間微妙對比的深刻反思。他的建築作品描繪了玻璃和鋼鐵構成的高樓大廈矗立在河流之上，既象徵了新加坡科技現代化的冷冽，又暗示了現代生活和工作的某種疏離。在這些作品中，可以看出范少華深受西方藝術實踐和理論的影響，這也是他所接受的教育。我欣賞他的許多此類作品，但我更受他傳統山水和荷花作品的吸引，這些作品在油畫與紙上的水墨設色之間大膽地遊走，傳達出他對中國文化傳統的認同。

在他的西方風格作品中，范少華在藝術家聲明《藝道 · 中途》中表示，他看到了中西藝術之間的明顯聯繫：「經過多年對中西方藝術的學習，我可以看到它們共同的出發點，即強調藝術的基本特性和精神。藝術的基本特性包括創造力和能量，而且它們必須充滿生命力和想像力。」范少華的風景和荷花作品之所以具有如此的力量，不僅僅在於他作為畫家的技巧和他不斷尋求自身視覺語言的過程，更在於他對視覺藝術在人類歷史藝術傳統中的基本連結有深刻的理解。若無這些聯結，藝術只是一種裝飾性的工藝，而藝術應該是啟迪人心，指引人類邁向未來的光明道路。

無論一個人多麼努力地試圖拒絕自己的文化根源，總會有那麼一刻，必須要決定是接受過去已然失去，還是重新與之聯繫，以自己嶄新的生活經歷全心擁抱它。

隨著藝術家的成長和變化，其藝術也隨之變化，這是不可避免的。對於范而言，回望過去並非在藝術上重複過去，而是尋找一條能夠照亮他創作新道路的光。重新找回過去的願望以及處理中國傳統藝術的表達抽象力量的強烈渴望是他不斷的創作動力，他今年早些時候在新加坡對我表示，這也讓他能以時間和距離的全新視角面對自己的藝術身份。在他《藝道 · 中途》的一個十年軌跡中，我們看到了一種與自己相融的藝術聲音，這是一種改變，他非常自如地接受，即使它偶爾讓他感到不安：他那多樣化的主題與風格是無法輕易放下的。

范少華說：“大約十年前，我真正開始回歸傳統。我覺得藝術應該代表個人的精神，通過這一點，人們能夠回歸本源。我現在更能以我的視角看待世界，這讓我作為藝術家更感自在。”

「我無法說東方或西方哪個更好，但對我來說，重要的是來自不同傳統的藝術能與個人精神相連。」

對於未準備好回歸傳統中國山水和荷花畫的藝術家而言，總會有被題材情感性所束縛的危險。無論山水的自然氣勢多麼強烈，或是盛開荷花的絢爛，藝術家常會忍不住試圖「改善」自然。然而，這在范少華的藝術中並不存在，因為他深知大自然總是勝過一切。就如同另一位新加坡的表現主義藝術家黃健（1942年生）一樣，范少華讓他的題材的物理實相自行發聲，激發觀者渴望透過畫作的表面進入自然之中。

范少華對傳統的詮釋並非從前人那裡簡單模仿而來，而是擁有其形式的某種莊重感，同時又帶有他個人獨特的線條和色彩。他近期作品的表面並非如傳統藝術般平整，而是充滿粗糙的質感，有時甚至如表現主義藝術般生猛。這一點在他的生動作品如《倒影》（2014年）、《探索者》（2014年）、《自然觀》（2015年）和《紅色陰影》（2015年）中得到了極好的表現。後兩者是圓形畫，這是范少華在過去十年間運用得極具視覺效果的一種形式。他在這一圓形構圖中的圖像，讓觀者的目光完全集中在眼前的敘事上，同時暗示觀者猶如在窺視大自然的私人時刻。這是一種橫跨時空和文化的誘惑形式，但也為藝術家帶來了各種挑戰，尤其是畫圓形構圖的難度。而且在一些藝術家之間，有時會覺得自己仿效了大師的作品。范少華對此有深刻的認識。

「我學習過大師的作品，也很欣賞他們，但對我而言，作為山水和水墨畫家，找到自己的聲音一直是最大的挑戰，」他說。「我不想讓自己的作品看起來像傳統大師的複製品。對我來說，宋代是最具啟發性和重要的時期，因為它最好地代表了中國的精神。但我並不模仿它。中國的精神在於人與自然合而為一。而在西方，我認為自然和人是分離的。我希望我的作品能夠代表中國的精神。」

范少華的山水畫是一種想像中的敘述，而非具體的某個地方，儘管它們顯然受到傳統與地理的啟發。但在他的山水畫創作中，其中一個最重要的影響是「嶺南派後裔和大師李湘楷的中國水墨。我對他那手法老練而強有力的筆觸印象深刻，並為他的構圖巧妙和視野開闊所吸引。他的畫作讓人即便近距離觀賞，卻能將心神引領至千里之外。」

清晰、巧妙和夢幻般的品質是范少華許多精湛作品的核心，但這些特質從未壓倒他的藝術，也從未阻礙他的即興表現。例如在他題為《長壽鶴》（2015年）的油畫中，這是一件具有微妙張力的多層作品，鶴在畫面上飛翔而下；瀑布的戲劇性和褐色的岩石懸崖襯托出牠們的優雅，而瀑布湧動的聲音彷彿在觀眾耳邊低語。

扇形畫作《輝煌之美》（2015年）也呈現出黑暗山脈的簡潔力量。而在《霜峰》（2015年）中，山峰騰空於藍天，似乎象徵著時間和自然的無窮無盡，鶴彷彿懸浮於空中，期待著一場漫長的飛行。圓形畫作《峰觀》（2015年）也傳達了山脈永恆不變的意象，彷彿它們在追尋與天空相接的時刻。裸露的樹枝在《輝煌之美》、《霜峰》和《峰觀》中運用書法般的筆觸，在畫布和紙上抒情地移動。正如范所說，這些「油畫的半抽象作品

看起來像是中國水墨畫。它們的構圖自由流暢，不受透視等規則的束縛。」

在范少華的藝術中，詩意的書法感隨處可見，且其題材具有一種即時的存在感，令人驚奇地帶有超現實的效果。有時，他的題材似乎遠到超越觀眾的視覺範圍。范的山水作品的視覺效果充滿現代主義的活力與實驗性，讓我們以全新的方式觀看傳統中國山水。

在他的山水畫中，可以明確感受到范少華受到的西方藝術影響，這是他坦承的事實。「從西方藝術中我學到的重要知識之一是關於希臘雕塑和人體、三維性，以及人與理想化的觀點。所有這些都對我的水墨作品和山水畫產生了深遠影響。」范少華說。

強調蓮花和它的花朵可能會讓范被視為傳統的中國花卉畫家，但這一點他很快予以否定。「我不是傳統的花卉畫家，」范少華說。「我的花是抽象的，我的形狀自由流動，所以很難說什麼是花，什麼不是，是蓮花還是玫瑰。」

他的一些蓮花作品是真實主義的，帶有表現主義的質感，但它們遠比他的抽象蓮花更少見。許多蓮花作品的線條和色彩——濃烈的紅、綠、藍和黃——暗示了傳統花卉畫的美感、音樂的律動和自然四季的變化，這些對范的創作活力至關重要。像《自然觀》、《倒影》和《紅色陰影》（2015年）這樣的作品強烈地表達了這些特質。

在他的蓮花作品中，范經常使用帶有季節名稱的標題，或暗示每個季節的自然特質，例如《秋之美》（2014年）。在這些作品中，范輕鬆地融合了東西方的諸多藝術關懷。「我經常以季節作為畫作的出發點，」范說。「我也以音樂和書法作為我抽象水墨作品的起點。我從未使用具體的地點作為起點，那樣限制太多。」

范少華對於尋找獨特藝術身份的探索仍在繼續。可以確定的是，這並不會限制他的藝術發展。他深知他的藝術之旅永無止境，而這正是創意精神應該擁有的。正如傳統和現代並肩行走於藝術的不竭之旅中，僅偶爾相遇以進行實驗，藝術家的精神也在不斷尋求更新。回歸傳統只是旅程中的一站，一個短暫的停歇，然後迎接新的挑戰。范少華深諳此道。

Over the past four decades, innumerable mainland Chinese artists have been strongly influenced by Western art styles and traditions. This was a great part of their individual and collective success at the beginning of the 1980s as their art was readily accessible to Western audiences and, to some extent, reinforced the perceived notion of the superiority of Western art forms in the international art world. While many of the most singular artists of the post-Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) era remained at home to make art for changing times, numerous others emigrated across the world to develop artistic identities free of political and social constraints. After the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, many others followed

Southeast Asia was among the most significant early destinations over the past century for Chinese artists, especially the countries now known as Singapore and Malaysia, which were viewed, prior to the Second World War, as secure and welcoming. The Guangzhou-born artist Fan Shaohua is one of the many Chinese artists for whom emigration to Singapore in the late 1980s and early 1990s constituted both a break from rigid politi-cal, social, and artistic constraints and the challenge of a new cultural and artistic life, as both artist and teacher.

Fan Shaohua arrived in Singapore as an already accomplished painter in 1992, at a time when Singapore was itself seeking fresh directions in its artistic development. Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts' had been around since 1938 but LASALLE College of the Arts had only opened in 1984, and it was in throes of forging its own identity as an art school under the guidance of the sculp tor, Brother Joseph McNally (1923-2002). 

The Singapore Fan Shaohua emigrated to was certainly not a world devoid of art and a history of artistic achieve-ment. On the contrary, it had already established the reputations of a wide range of artists: among these were such pioneer modern artists as Georgette Chen (1906-1993), Liu Kang (1911-2004), Chen Wen Hsi (1906-1991), and Cheong Soo Pieng (1917-1983). Individually and collectively these artists played important roles in developing the art style that came to be known as Nanyang art and also as mentors to early post-War generations of Singaporean and Malaysian artists.

Their influence was not only as teachers and mentors but also as artists who had wide experience in Western art, in Europe and the United States, and in the traditional Chinese art canon. Their influences reverberate subtly throughout the Southeast Asian art world to this day.

Through his awareness of Singapore's pioneer artists and their traditions Fan Shaohua gradually carved out an impressive niche for himself as an artist and teacher, which his recent retrospective entitled Journey in Art at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts served as witness.

Born in Guangzhou in 1963, Fan Shaohua graduated with a BA in fine arts from Guangzhou Academy of

Fine Arts in 1985, he immediately began teaching at Guangdong Huanan Art University. In 1992, Fan emigrated to Singapore where "I liked its multicultural society and am able to appreciate art forms from different parts of the world, learning from their different painting schools and styles as well. It has been an eye-opener for me."

Between 1992 and 2002, Fan made many outstanding works as a figurative artist. He recorded Singapore's recent history through portraiture of his varied subjects. From the innocence of children to the hardiness of the ordinary worker and women of all ages to the determined spirit of the late leader Lee Kuan Yew (1923-2015) Fan developed a singular style for his realism. He notes in making portraits one has not only "to be able to understand the construction of the human body, the posture and appearance of the characters, the interplay of light and shadows, and the use of cool warm colors, one also has to observe deeply the character's personality and cha-risma, his life and person."

Moving around Fan Shaohua's retrospective it is clear that he is a keen observer of the world. His portraits stand out as one example of this but his street scenes and his busy river scenes also highlight his astute reflections of the city-state and the odd juxtaposition between the bustling past and the clean-cut pres-ent. His architectural works of glass and steel towers looming over the river suggest the cool modernity of technological Singapore, but they also suggest something of the remoteness of modern life and work. In such works it is clear that Fan is steeped in the Western art practice and theories in which he was educated. I admire many such works, but I am more engaged with his vision of traditional landscape and the lotus that move boldly between oil on canvas and ink-and-color on paper, which speak to his Chinese cultural traditions.

In his Western-style works Fan says, in his artist's statement My Journey to Art, that he sees the clear connection between Chinese and Western art: "After years of studying Chinese and Western art, I can see their common starting point which is to emphasize art's basic characteristics and spirit. Art's basic characteristics include creativity, [and] energy, and they must be full of life and imagination too." It is not only Fan's skills as a painter and his continuous search for his own visual language that lend his landscapes and lotuses their power but also his crucial understanding of visual art's fundamental human and painterly connections within historical art traditions. Without these relationships art is but decorative craft when it should be something that enlightens the human spirit and lights humankind's way into the future.

However much one struggles to reject one's cultural ori-gins, there always comes a time when one has to make the decision to either accept that the past is lost to one or to re-en-gage with it, to embrace it wholeheartedly with one's new life experiences.

As the artist grows and changes, so does his art: it is inevitable. Looking back for Fan was not to repeat the past in artistic terms but to find a light that would shine on his new creative path forward. The desire to regain the past and to deal freshly with the expressive abstract power of Chinese traditional art was strong, he told me in Singapore earlier this year, but it had to be through his fresh perspective of time and distance as well as the struggles to be his singular self as an artist. As one looks across the arc of a decade in his Journey in Art, one sees an artistic voice that has become at ease with itself. It was a change with which Fan was extremely comfortable, even as it sometimes unsettled him: his diverse range of subjects and themes could not easily be cast aside.

"I really started to go back to tradition about ten years ago," says Fan. "I feel that art should represent one's spirit and that through this one get back to one's roots. I do feel better about myself as an artist because I feel that I am now painting my own vision of the world.

I can't say that the East or the West is better, but for me what is important is that art from different traditions is related to one's individual spirit."

For the unprepared artist returning to traditional Chinese landscape and lotus painting there is always a danger of being trapped by sentimentality in the painting of their subjects. Regardless of the natural intensity of landscape and the colorful brilliance of a blooming lotus, artists often feel compelled to try to "improve" on nature. This is not the case in Fan Shaohua's art, for he knows that nature always wins. Like Wong Keen (b.1942), another Singaporean expressionist artist of landscape and lotus, Fan allows the physical reality of his subjects to speak for itself, playing with the viewer's desire to see beyond the surface of the painting and into nature. 

Fan's vision of tradition is not something copied from past masters but one that possesses something of its formality yet with his own individual line and colors. The surfaces of his recent paintings are not flat as in traditional art but rough-textured, sometimes raw, as in Expressionist art. One sees this to a good effect in his lively paintings such as Reflections (2014), Seeker (2014), Nature's View 2015), and Shade of Red (2015). The latter two are tondo, a form that Fan Shaohua has used to a great visual effect during the past decade. The images he makes in this round form focus the eye completely on the immediate narrative as well as suggesting to viewers that they are voyeurs to one of nature's private moments. It is a seductive form that speaks across time and cultures but it also presents the artist with various difficulties, not the least of which is painting in the round. And among some artists there is the feeling that they are copying something of the masters. Fan is aware of this.

"I studied the masters and I appreciate them but the biggest challenge for me has been to find my own voice as a landscape and ink painter," he says. "I don't want my work to look like copies of the traditional masters. For me the Song dynasty is the most inspirational period and the most important as it has best represented the Chinese spirit. But I don't copy it. The Chinese spirit is that nature and humanity are together. In the West, I believe, nature and people are separate. I want my work to represent the Chinese spirit."

Fan's landscapes are narratives of the imagination and not of any particular place, although they are certainly informed and inspired by tradition and place. But one of his most significant influences in landscape painting is the "Lingnan School descendant and master Li Xiangcai's Chinese ink. I was impressed by his old but strong hand with the brush, and attracted to his clever and clear composi-tions, which look far and high. Looking at his painting at close range, they can sometimes bring one to a state of mind thousands of miles away."

Clarity, cleverness, and a dream-like quality are at the heart of many of Fan's finest works, but these never overwhelm his art, never inhibit his spontaneous vision. It is all there, for example, in the drama of the oil painting entitled Longevity Crane (2015), which is a layered work of subtle intensity, with cranes swooping down the picture plane; the dramatic waterfalls and the brown-rocked cliff faces emphasize their grace, and the distant gushing sounds of waterfalls whisper at the edge of a viewer's hearing.

Glorious Beauty (2015), painted in fan form, also has a sense of the spare power of dark mountains.

And the mountains soaring into a light blue sky as in Frosty Peaks (2015) speak to the endlessness of time and nature in which cranes seem to be hovering in expectation of a long flight. The tondo entitled Peak Observations (2015) [see Cover] also suggests the timelessness of the mountain ranges as they seek to touch the sky. The naked tree branches in the foreground of Glorious Beauty, Frosty Peaks, and Peak Observations speak to the calligraphic brushstrokes as they move lyrically across canvas and paper. As Fan has said, these "semi-abstract works in oil look as if they are Chinese ink paintings. Their compositions are in a free-flowing style uninhibited by any rules such as perspective."

In all of Fan Shaohua's art one is never far from a poetic sense of calligraphy and his subjects have an immediate presence that can be quite - startling in a surreal way. At other his subjects seem so distant as to be beyond the viewer's perception. The visual effects of Fan's landscape, which burst with modernist energy and experi-ment, open our eyes to a fresh way of looking at traditional Chinese landscape. 

It is in Fan's landscapes that one has a concrete sense of his Western art influences, which is something that he is quick to acknowledge. "Among the important things that I learned from Western art was about Greek sculpture and the body, the three-dimensional aspects of these, and the people and the idealized view of these. All of these have had a deep influence on my ink work and landscapes," says Fan

Emphasizing the lotus and its flowers may mark Fan as something of a traditional Chinese flower painter, but this is something that he readily dismisses. "I am not a traditional painter of flowers," says Fan. "My flowers are abstract, my forms are free flowing, so it is difficult to say what one is and what is not, a flower or a lotus or a rose."

Some of his lotus works are realistic, touched with the textures of expressionism, but they are much less common than his abstract lotuses. The line and colors-rich reds, greens, blues, and yellows—of many of the lotus works suggest the beauty of traditional flower painting, the hum of music, and nature's turning seasons, all of which are important to Fan's creative energy. Works such as Nature's View, Reflections, and Shade of Red (2015) speak powerfully to these qualities.

In his lotus works Fan often uses titles with the name of the seasons or alludes to the natural qualities of each season, as in Autumn Beauty (2014). In these works Fan easily blends numerous artistic concerns of the East and the West. "I often use the seasons as a starting point in my paintings," says Fan. "I also use music and calligraphy as starting points in my abstract ink works. I never use a place as starting point. It is limiting."

Fan Shaohua's search for a singular artistic identity contin-ues. It is not one that will limit his art: this is certain. He knows that his journey into art is one that has no end in sight and this is as it ought to be for the creative spirit. Just as tradition and modernity travel side by side along art's never-ending journey, only occasionally meeting to experiment, so, too, does the traveler's spirit as it seeks to be renewed. Returning to tradition is just a stop on the way, a brief respite before engaging in something new. Fan Shaohua know this well.