Zhou Shixin

Zhou shixin —Founding President of Vancouver Chinese Artists Association
Zhou Shixin was born in Suzhou on February 21, 1923. He learned from his father Red deer Gong Fang Meng, and his uncle Mu Tian Gong personally taught poetry and calligraphy. Early graduated from Suzhou Fine Arts College, and studied under Wu Zi Shen, like LAN Kunzhong, Zhang Xingjie (Xin Jia), Liu Junran and other famous artists. He moved to Hong Kong in 1949. He taught at New Asia College, the Chinese University of Hong Kong from 1962 to 1971. He moved to California in 1971. He moved to Vancouver, Canada in 1980. He has taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of California, Northridge, and the University of British Columbia. He is currently the founding president of Vancouver Chinese Artists Association, the consultant of Canadian Literature and Art Association, the consultant of Beijing Oriental Culture Compensation, the honorary consultant of Jiangxi Bashan Research Association, and the consultant of Suzhou Wumen Yaji.

Zhou Shixin was born in a scholarly family in Suzhou. Under the enlightenment of his father, Red Deer, he began to learn poetry and calligraphy from his uncle Mu Tian, and then studied Suzhou Fine Arts, and learned from Wu Zi deep, like LAN Kunzhong, Zhang Xingjie (Xin Jia), Liu Junran and other famous masters. His youth was full of the desire for freedom and peace, but also experienced the displacement brought by war. His early works are permeated with the eulogizing of life and the love of life.

Works by Zhou Shixin
In 1949, at the age of 27, Zhou Shixin moved to Hong Kong for the first time in his life. A newcomer, the pressure of life, the plight of his career, let him in an extreme confusion. However, a downpour on November 13, 1951, brought a dramatic turnaround to his career. It was the heavy rain that drove the crowd waiting to cross the sea at the Star Ferry Pier in Hong Kong that day into Zhou Shixin’s exhibition hall at the city Hall Hotel. It is also this “timely rain” that Zhou Shixin met an important person in his artistic life – Li Shimin, Chiang Kai-shek’s English teacher, who also came to the hotel to shelter from the rain. Since then, Zhou Shixin’s artistic life has entered a new hall, he began to participate in the literary and artistic activities of social celebrities, make friends, learn a lot, at the same time, open classes, promote the Wu school painting art. His talent not only got the favor and admiration of Ms. Mulan, the wife of the Hong Kong governor at that time, but also the appreciation of the Justice of the Peace Zhou Liangliang couple, they specially held a grand Chinese exhibition for him in Washington, the United States. The year 1957 was a bumper year for Zhou Shixin’s career. In this year, he won the first prize of the Hong Kong Youth Chinese Painting Competition and the champion award of the Hong Kong Industrial Exhibition Exhibition Design Competition, won the certificate of appreciation of the 5th Japan Painting House Exhibition of the Ueno Independent Art Museum in Tokyo, and was also known as the “painting father”. Subsequently, he served as a lecturer in the art department of the New Asia College of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the host of the “Learning Chinese Painting” program of the Beautiful TV station, and was appointed as a research fellow of the Chinese Academy of Arts in Taiwan and the vice president of the Chinese Art Society in Hong Kong.

In 1971, the young Zhou Shixin resolutely gave up the foundation set by the hard work in Hong Kong, and his family came to California, the United States, and began the second wandering in his life. This is also the beginning of the Chinese Wumen painting school to truly enter the world painting circle. Ten years of life in the United States, Zhou Shixin’s painting art entered an unprecedented stage of refinement, his painting style began to reveal his unique personality and humanistic charm, and was called the “important town” of Wumen painting school overseas. He has taught in the art department of the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of California, Northridge, and served as the chairman of the Chinese Art Department of the Pacific Asian Museum of the United States, and the planning committee of the all-Asian Art Exhibition in California. In recognition of Zhou Shixin’s contribution to American culture and education, the city government of Los Angeles awarded him the Fine Arts Contribution Award and the Lotus Award, and the City of Los Angeles Cirrito awarded him the ABC Adult Education Award.
In 1980, at the age of 58, Zhou Shixin once again bid farewell to his flourishing career in the United States and moved his family to Vancouver, Canada, where he began his ideal idyllic creative life. At this time, his artistic creation has entered the realm of perfection, “the object is dissolved, the heart and hand are not obstructed, and the scene is merged”. He has taught at the University of British Columbia, Canada, part-time Hua Kang (permanent) professor of Chinese Culture University, head of the art department, the Chinese Academy of Philosophy, and founded the Vancouver Chinese Artists Association, and held many social positions.
In half a century of travel, Zhou Shixin has traveled to the famous mountains and rivers of more than 30 countries, enjoying the colorful exotic scenery. His paintings start from the foot, express feelings, from the feeling, to the thought. His works penetrate through the ancient and modern times, not only the Ming Dynasty by Shen Zhou and Wen Zhengming established a high degree of integration of books, paintings, poetry, literature to the extreme, but also led the Ming Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty for 400 years, the Wu school landscape painting into a new realm. He is known as “far crazy birthday, avoid the ancient”, “beyond the common, the more time and space” epoch-making master, is the most genuine art as a model of life and cultural thinking.

As a representative of the new literati painting school, Zhou Shixin’s painting works are known for flowers and birds, landscapes, simple and fresh, and lofty artistic conception, which not only vividly demonstrates the essence of the Wumen painting school, “a new idea in the change of law, wonderful reason in the bold and unrestrained”, but also integrated into the Western painting style, extraordinary elegant, quiet and indifferent, a unique generation of painting style painting, Angling the world’s painting scene.
Splash-ink freehand landscape painting
The most representative of Zhou Shixin’s artistic transformation and innovation is the splash-ink freehand landscape painting, such as “Clear Landscape of Rock Valley”, which has a solid and empty composition, a rich and varied hierarchy and rhythm, giving people unlimited imagination space. And his other original techniques – “broad brush landscape” and “freehand green landscape” painted paintings, such as “Grand Canyon”, “Iguisu Waterfall”, “Rocky Mountain Long Scroll”, “Three Gorges on both sides of the painting Group”, etc., are the beauty of the canyon, the magnificence of the waterfall, the majestic mountain range, enlightenment, feather, immortal into the pen, heroic, deep artistic conception, Bring people a surreal beauty and shock. His flower-and-bird paintings are warm and quiet, with unique charm. With subtle and forthright brushwork, he creates a fresh and elegant, simple and simple beauty, giving people fresh visual enjoyment. Therefore, there are ancient calligrapher and painter Xu Wenjing said: “Contemporary flower and bird painting famous, Hangzhou has Tang Yun, Suzhou has Zhou Shixin.” This kind of graphic art permeates the three-dimensional tension of the painting, in today’s world painting, can also be described as a handful.
The calligraphy of Chinese painting master Zhang Daqian
Zhang Daqian, the master of contemporary Chinese painting, had an incomprehending relationship with Zhou Shixin. He and Zhou Shixin co-wrote and inscriptions of the works as many as 29, of which 4 Zhongtang fine “Lotus fish algae”, “weaving hedge Qiu Ju”, “Yifu when noble”, “Plum and bamboo double Qing”, such as out of the hand of the family, exquisite, is regarded as the world’s ink treasure. In the eyes of Zhang Daqian, Zhou Shixin is “a great six as the rest of the mind, in the past hundred years, there is no such brush.”
Similarly, Qian Mu, the master of Chinese studies, also admired Zhou Shixin’s work, praising it as “having the most important moral realm of literati painting, and his painting style is like his character.” Historian Luo Gan commented that Zhou Shixin’s paintings are “thinking of the past without being stuck in the past, seeking the new without being trapped in the new.”
Zhou Shixin’s two idle chapters
One side is “the ancients do not let the sages”, the other side is “heart for the furnace melting cast ancient and modern”. This is also a highly generalized and true portrayal of his painting and learning style throughout his life.

His painting is very rigorous, full of Li Keran’s “waste painting 3000” momentum.
Painting and calligraphy for him, like life, never wasted a day. About 15,000 of his paintings have been published so far, and he has participated in more than 170 solo exhibitions and group exhibitions at home and abroad. Among them, 53 frames have been permanently collected by museums, art galleries, famous universities, cultural and educational institutions in Taiwan, Beijing, Hong Kong, London, the United States, Singapore, Canada and other countries and regions. His ink treasures are engraved in the modern stele forest in Kaifeng, Henan Province, the Yuanji Stele forest in Lianhuashan, Hubei Province, and the Danxia stone wall in Chishui, Guizhou Province.

Zhou Shixin is known as a “highly respected senior art educator”, whose moral knowledge is a model for a generation of teachers. His art monographs have a total of 17 kinds and 29 volumes, including painting collection, painting theory, painting history, painting biography, painting spectrum, etc., such as: “Introduction to Traditional Chinese Painting Techniques”, “Foundation of Flower and Bird Painting”, “Eight Mountain People Yearbook”, “Plum Spectrum”, “Plum, Orchid, Bamboo and Chrysanthemum Spectrum”, “Four Seasons Flower Spectrum”, “Bird Spectrum”, “Vegetables, Fruits, insects and fish Spectrum”, “Cross-strait”, “Zhou Shixin Painting Collection” (1, 2), “Hundred Stones Atlas”, “Painting Fun”, “Zhou Shixin Talk Art Record”, etc. Among them, the book “Eight Mountain People and their art” is regarded as an important work of the first generation of painting style, and was collected by Jiangxi Eight Mountain People Memorial Hall as a collection of documents, and was published by Japan in Japanese translation, renowned in the academic community.

So far, Zhou Shixin has won more than 50 awards and honors at home and abroad. These include the Honorary Cultural Award of the Chinese Culture University in Taiwan, the Honorary Award of the Taiwan Art Education Museum, the Gold Medal of the Taiwan History Museum, the Gold Medal of the Chinese Cultural Association in Hong Kong, the Golden Honor Award of the Fifth All China Art Exhibition, the Golden Ding Award for Contributions to World Culture and Technology, the Fine Arts Contribution Award of the Los Angeles Museum of Fine Arts, the 20th Century Art Contribution Award of the Asia-Pacific Art Institute in Maryland, and the 20th Century Art Contribution Award of the North Carolina Institute of Fine Arts in the United States The ABI “Two thousand Year Outstanding Person” certificate of the American Biographical Society of Nevada and the Ten Outstanding Achievement Art Award of Vancouver, Canada.
In recognition of Zhou’s special contribution to the promotion of Canadian multiculturalism over the decades, the Governor General of Canada, Wu Bingzhi, Prime Minister Ma Tian and the Governor of Canada, Lin Siqi, have presented awards to him. It was a historic first for a Chinese-Canadian artist.