Zeng's life-long commitment to painting plants
Editor's note: Zeng Xiaolian, aged 80 plus, is known as "father painter of Chinese plants", having spent 45 years painting for the voluminous Flora of China. During those years, Zeng often observed plants in the wild, bitten by leeches without his awareness. In his view, botanical paintings should be "faithful" and "vivid", conveying rigor in science but ease in life. The paintings need to mirror nature, show vitality and call on the public to protect plant diversity.
Zeng Xiaolian (Online photo subject to deletion)
Zeng's life-long commitment to painting plants
At the end of last year, the Zeng Xiaolian art gallery in Kunming World Expo Garden was officially opened to the public. For several months, countless tourists have visited the gallery on weekends. Looking at the paintings created by Zeng, many said "the painted grass and trees look so impressive that they can make people cry".
Zeng Xiaolian is known as "father of Chinese plant painting", but he doesn't like the title of "painter" or "botanist". Zeng said that he’s just an old employee of Chinese Academy of Sciences. Since graduating from high school, Zeng had been working for the academy only till his retirement years ago. “For decades, I’ve been doing nothing but painting plants, and the only sense of achievement came from my participation in compiling Flora Reipublicae Popularis Sinicae, or Flora of China,” said Zeng. In the interview, Zeng was either thinking or smiling, with concentration or innocence in his eyes.
Mission of painting plants
Zeng Xiaolian is a professor-level painter of plant science, as well as an engineer, at Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences. In painting pseudo-ginseng, he paid special attention to the leaf veins, including their trends of growth; While doing Cypripedium calceolus, Zeng noticed the differed numbers of fine hair on different sections of the stem.
A botanical painting by Zeng Xiaolian (Online photo subject to deletion)
"Botanical painting is like the ID card of plants, and it's a narrow field between art and science. The painter describes plants scientifically, even more accurately than words,” said Zeng Xiaolian, making an analogy.
Last July, Zeng was painting from life at the Kunming Botanical Garden. He specifically told people around him to speak softly and not to disturb the "model" in front of him. "Musella lasiocarpa is endemic to China. With its leaves resembling those of banana, the plant features lotus-shaped followers of golden and sturdy petals." Zeng is quite familiar with plants.
As a botanist, Zeng Xiaolian produces paintings that can stand the test of scientific studies. Each of his paintings is informative. Besides showing the roots, branches, flowers and fruits, it even tells the leave's front, back and side that taxonomists value most. As a painter, Zeng said that he was trying to make plants beautiful, and unable to change the plant features he worked hard on light, color, emptiness or fullness, brightness or shade.
A botanical painting by Zeng Xiaolian (Online photo subject to deletion)
Zeng said he had obsessive-compulsive disorder, and there were fixed steps in drawing plants. Generally, he first looked at the photos and sketched it from the place of origin, and Zeng didn't paint it until having a full grasp of the plant by dissecting specimens. To paint garlic, he spent two years observing its blooming process.
Zeng would use two words to describe his works -- "faith" and "life". It’s easy to be faithful but hard to be vivid, or expressive. "The life of plants is either soft or tough, both stemming from their calmness in the face of nature,” observed Zeng. “Each flower blooms in its own way, and you’ll never paint well unless setting your eyes and heart to it."
Zeng Xiaolian hoped his botanical paintings can convey the viewer an attitude -- rigor in scientific but ease in life. "This painting is directly related to our current drive for ecological progress,” said Zeng, adding his mission is to mirror nature, manifest life and arouse people's sense of identity and intimacy with nature.
Zeng Xiaolian (Online photo subject to deletion)
45 years of drawing for Flora of China
Zeng Xiaolian was born in northeast Yunnan's Weixin county in June 1939. Having been in love with painting since childhood, he played a major role in making the blackboard newspaper of his class in high school.
When compilation of Flora of China was started in 1959, Zeng was assigned to draw specimens. More than 30,000 plants grow in China. It's quite challenging to compile them all into a book of pictures.
"Flora and fauna are the basic data of a country. China can't protect the environment and biodiversity without these basic data." Zeng Xiaolian knew well the significance of compiling Flora of China.
The scientific illustrations of Flora of China are mostly black-and-white drawings based on wax leaf specimens, which have a set of almost stylized drawing methods. Zeng was not outstanding among draftsmen, but his drawing methods were different from those of others: In addition to copying specimens, he also insisted on sketching and observing living plants in the wild. He believed no identical leaves exist in the world, and he needed to make his pictures vivid. "I want to endow my drawings with life ".
A botanical painting by Zeng Xiaolian (Online photo subject to deletion)
The hardships of sketching in the wild are beyond us, featuring unexpected attacks by ants, leeches, wasps and poisonous snakes. In an expedition, Zeng Xiaolian went deep into a bush for plant specimens, but on his way back, he vaguely sensed that blood was oozing out of him. Back then, Zeng was full of joy with the newly gathered specimens, and he didn't care, thinking it was just a slight bite by mosquito. "Later I learned it was a leech bite,” said Zeng. “You didn't feel pain at leech bites, and you might not notice them until the leeches had sucked enough blood from you and left, but the blood would keep running."
Because of the time-consuming field work, Zeng Xiaolian is slower than others. In drawing each picture, he first had a pencil draft, showed it to botanists for confirmation, and then re-drew the confirmed picture with a pen. Most of his illustrations for Flora of China went through the said steps.
Starting in late 1950s, Zeng and other draftsmen worked closely with botanists in drawing illustrations for Flora of China for 45 years. Finally, the voluminous Flora of China, which record 31,142 species, 301 families, or 3,408 genera of plants in China, was completed. The work consists of 80 volumes, 126 books, over 50 million words and more than 9,000 pictures.
A botanical painting by Zeng Xiaolian (Online photo subject to deletion)
Flowers and birds are all living beings; leaves and branches on the pictures represent his devotion. Zeng didn't expect everyone to like his botanical drawings, but he hoped the readers of Flora of China could care for plants in nature. "They should have the right to survive and reproduce just like human beings," said Zeng.
Compiling by Times reporters; Trans-editing by Wang Shixue