An international painting competition is more than a place for storied artists to win prizes; it’s one where artists can gain valuable insight from their peers, in an atelier-like setting, just like the old masters once did.
The spiritual practice Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, was introduced to the public in China in 1992, and taught people to follow the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. Amid the repressive environment under the Chinese communist regime, these simple but powerful principles flourished, and an estimated 70 million people took up the practice by 1999.
The 45 Tianjin practitioners had been arrested while appealing to a magazine publisher who had published an article slandering their faith.
A few of the petitioners were called on to meet with Chinese premier Zhu Rongji and his staff, and the peaceful protest ended with the release of the detained practitioners.
Just a few months later, on July 20, 1999, Chinese Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin ordered police to arrest practitioners across China. Some were beaten and tortured. On July 22, Jiang officially banned Falun Gong and later started a systematic campaign of persecution against practitioners, including the heinous act of state-sanctioned organ harvesting.
Painting the Truth
In Kong’s award-winning painting, hundreds of practitioners form an orderly line outside the central appeals office in Beijing, waiting to be heard. Kong had wanted to paint the people who were there that day, but the available photographs were of a low resolution.
Instead, she met practitioners outside of mainland China and painted each person as an individual portrait. “I tried to bring to life their actual personalities, facial expressions, and inner spirit,” she said. She made a complex composition with multiple perspectives so that any part of the painting could be viewed as if you were looking straight at it.
She took more than five years to complete the painting, often spending 16 hours a day at her easel.
Painting Like the Old Masters
Wilson first met Kong in New York during the NTD competition. As a Falun Gong practitioner, Wilson felt deeply moved by Kong’s painting and her personal story. Their shared faith and spiritual understanding transcended their language barrier. Both sought to paint the truth.
Wilson’s art training happened later in life than Kong’s. When Wilson’s twin boys started school, she joined a local art class that her mother attended. At one of the classes, they explored chiaroscuro, the technique that 17th-century Italian artist Caravaggio loved, whereby dramatic light and shade define a composition.
A series of serendipitous events propelled Wilson on her path to learn those age-old traditions. Around the time that she learned chiaroscuro, her mother’s copy of Artists & Illustrators magazine featured traditional artists from Manchester, not far from where she lives. That’s how she first heard of Louis Smith, who taught part-time classes in classical portraiture. Wilson was a full-time caretaker for her partner who had just had a stroke, so she wasn’t in a position to learn with Smith at the time.
Two years later, Wilson contacted Smith to do paid modeling. Smith had now established a two-year course on the traditional methods of painting he had learned at the Angel Academy of Art in Florence, Italy. Smith needed administrative help, and Wilson wanted to learn from him but couldn’t afford the tuition. It seemed like a perfect arrangement, so they exchanged skills for six months.
The Value of Traditional Art
Knowing artistic traditions gives the artist a framework to work within. Wilson recalls reading that Leonardo da Vinci taught his students and then encouraged them to develop their own style. She likens that process to being taught handwriting. We are all taught how to form letters and words, and then we develop our personal handwriting style.Wilson finds the classical painting process beautiful and rewarding. It’s a very technical process, using centuries-old recipes and methods passed down from master to apprentice, generation after generation.
She enjoys the expressive nature of the classical art tradition. “It allows for movement, feeling, and emotion,” Wilson told The Epoch Times. She explained that when painting in the classical style, the artist achieves movement in the painting by choosing what part to focus on and what to slightly blur. A hyperrealist artist, however, concentrates on giving clarity to the whole composition, often resulting in a lack of depth in a work.
Painting With Purpose
Every artist has an Achilles’s heel. At the moment, Wilson struggles with the initial construction phase, when she has to draft the composition using straight lines and apexes. It’s the foundation of a whole painting. If the elements of the construction drawing—the measurements, proportion, and perspective—aren’t right, then the composition collapses later in the process. The more you practice, the better your brain becomes at recognizing the right angles to draw, she explained.When Wilson puts her paintbrush to canvas, she often feels a divine presence guiding her. She once read it described as “having the stroke of gods.”
“Personal thoughts come out that you can’t even conceive with your conscious mind,” she said.
Smith taught Wilson the classical drawing method using conté, a crayon made from compressed charcoal or graphite and clay that is slightly oilier than charcoal. She enjoys the dramatic lighting effects that conté allows, like in her portrait of human rights investigator Ethan Gutmann. She’s happy with the effect. “It feels like he’s coming out of the darkness,” she said.
The Importance of Peer Support
Wilson took months to complete Gutmann’s portrait because of her family commitments. A competition deadline and a gentle nudge from a fellow artist helped her focus on completing the drawing and letting go of perfection.After completing the portrait, Wilson gained the confidence to enter the competition for the prestigious BP Portrait Award, held at the National Portrait Gallery in London. She entered a self-portrait that she’d completed in an intense six days of painting in front of the mirror. The painting hangs on her wall. She sees it as a record of her artistic progress, and now views it as more of an underpainting needing refinement. Every piece she creates is a stepping stone to mastery.
Wilson entered the 5th NTD International Figure Painting Competition with a composition she’d seen while meditating. She worked alone creating the piece, using figures from her imagination rather than drawing from models. At this point, she wanted to stay true to her vision. “I wanted to prove myself,” she said. “I didn’t want any interference from anyone telling me it should be like this or that.”
Although Wilson’s competition entry wasn’t accepted, she won valuable insights from the process and an invitation to New York to accompany the competition finalists on expert talks and tours to museums.
Staying at the same hotel as Kong gave Wilson the opportunity to learn about Kong’s life and her painting technique. She took onboard this guidance, and that of other painters, soaking everything up like a sponge; in her view, accepting peer help and constructive criticism is an important part of artistic development.
She soon realized where she'd gone wrong with her competition entry—she had been trying to make the perfect painting without having the right tools or skills. Great artists such as 19th-century painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau used models, using the same model in different positions for a painting. She also realized that the finalists’ works weren’t perfect, but they accepted imperfections as part of their painting process.
Just like Kong, Wilson wants her art to help people know the truth and to guide people to goodness. “What I’m doing is definitely about awakening from this world,” she said. For Wilson, that means not only showing the goodness of humanity, but also reminding people that we have to face divine consequences if our thinking isn’t upright.
Wilson hopes that her story helps aspiring artists who may be afraid to try, or think that they can’t create representational art. “It is very difficult. But try and see what happens—put your heart into it,” she said.
