Tiefeng Jiang
Elephant Family Platter
Dragon Bride Bronze
Dragon Bride Serigraph
White Mermaid Serigraph
Mermaid Bronze
Morning Flowers
The Empress
Spring Rhyme
Cheetah
My World II
Blue Lady
Beautiful Wild
Jiang was born in 1938, in Ningbo, Zhejiiang Province, in China. Even as a child he displayed a great love and talent for painting and drawing, and early on he knew the course his life would take.
From 1962-64 he studied with the famous Chinese artist Huang Yong-yu, who first exposed him to the paintings from the Dunguang caves. Jiang also learned about traditional Chinese art, an influence that would remain with him. Upon graduation in 1964 Jiang and a small number of other artists volunteered to go down to the lush and tropical Yunnan province. The natural beauty of the Yunnan province inspired him. With two other artists, He Neng and Liu Shaohui, Jiang secretly formed the nucleus of what was first called the "Heavy Colorist" school and is now known as the "Yunnan School," began.
Jiang's work quickly gained prominence and even the repressive authorities had to concede his talent. He became one of the most well known illustrators of children's books in China. In 1978, Jiang began to teach as an Associate Professor at the Yunnan Art Academy, where he would continue until 1983.
But as early as 1981 the Chinese Government had returned to its repressive policies. Government officials publicly stated that they feared China was losing its "socialist morality" and becoming "morally polluted." Art officials favored a return to Socialist Realism painting and they expressed their displeasure by refusing to select paintings by Jiang, Liu Shaohai, or He Neng for the permanent collection of the National Art Gallery.
All of this was making life increasingly difficult for Jiang. In 1982 a National Geographic reporter who was doing a story on China saw Jiang's paintings, and brought some back to the U.S. In 1983, Jiang came to the United States as part of a cultural exchange program with the University of Southern California, where he became a visiting Professor of Art.
For Jiang, success in America quickly followed. His rich, strong color, and exotic but intimate imagery struck an immediate response with the American public.
The “Flung Ink” method, invented by the ancient zen artists more than 1500 years ago, is the precursor of abstract expressionism. By flicking the paint of the end of the brush the artists could create a totally energized surface. This is precisely what Jackson Pollock rediscovered in the 1940s and 50s. But the Chinese had always used this technique, and Jiang uses it masterfully.
The influence of the Dunguang Cave imagery and style combined with European Cubist influences, such as the use of transparent washes of colors to allow for a multileveled view of reality, characterize Jiang's work to this day.
Jiang would also incorporate many of these traditional Chinese folkloric images into his art.
Jiang's colors are of unsurpassed richness. A colorist, Jiang's intention was to reverse the trend of the stale Chinese tradition of painting in gray, black, and white. Jiang says: "Chinese art had reached a sick level due to its lack of color."
As noted above, Jiang is a storyteller. His paintings are steeped in Buddhist and Chinese mythology. Each figure has a symbolic meaning. The paintings have so much complexity and visual fascination that the viewer is constantly seeing something new.
"For every picture there is a story, and for every story there is a picture. An artist is not a photographer; my work is my understanding of life. It is difficult for me to remember what distances I have traveled, how many mountains I have climbed, how many rivers I have crossed, and how many villages I have passed through. I can only recall the countless joyous moments and hardships of the past years from the many pictures I have painted. My deep love of the colorful earth and for Xishuangbanna, a region of the Yunnan Province, has encouraged me to explore and create unceasingly. Such a mysterious land blessed with unique beauty offers innumerable subjects to be painted. My paintings are not only pictures: they are also music and poetry that is bewitching, sweet dreams that are being dreamed."