Painter depicts great Taihang Mountains with passion and love

Ma Jianguo's painting. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Great mountains, featured on Chinese painting paper in a three-dimensional style, surprisingly echo Cubism.

The strong colors from dry ink, black and brown, create shockingly stunning structures of rocks and trees.

These freehand landscape paintings by Ma Jianguo are being exhibited at the Xingtan Art Museum in Beijing.

The scenery in his works, Taihang Mountains, is a landmark natural wonder near his hometown Handan in Hebei province.

As an artist with a dual identity of a painter and reporter, Ma has been trying to express his love and passion for Chinese culture and his home through brushes. He created traditional Chinese paintings that often leave people with a breathtaking and overwhelming impression.

In his paintings, Taihang Mountains look like a dependable man or a representation of Chinese civilization.

"To depict Taihang Mountains, from which I find a 'kao shan', or backup mountain, according to Chinese feng shui theory, is a way to pay my homage to the ancient Chinese civilization," Ma said.

The painter believes that an artist must capture the spirit or soul of nature, mountains and rivers. And "dependable" is the very spirit of Taihang Mountains that Ma wants to present.

Now, Ma is a member of the China Artists' Association, and a senior reporter at Xinhua News Agency.

The exhibition will run until June 16.