Unique Paper-Cutting Artist

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The 82-year-old Wang Huanqing is a retired teacher in Liandu District, Lishui City in southern Zhejiang Province. Her paper-cutting art is the most unusual in the country. Liu Pinhua, a first-grade national fine art master and deputy president of China Fine Art Research Academy, hailed Wang’s art as unique as opposed to the traditional paper-cutting works.

Wang’s art is an original hybrid between traditional paper-cutting and clip art. The first life-changing inspiration struck her during the week-long May 1 vacation in 2003. The retired teacher, sorting out old newspapers at home, thought it would be a pity and waste to throw away colored advertisement pages that had been delivered with newspapers. She wondered if these colored leaflets could be cut into useful decorations. A vase of plastic flowers on her table caught her eyes. So she decided to make flowers out of the leaflets. With a pair of scissors and a bottle of glue, she successfully made a bunch of paper flowers out of the advertisement sheets.

The successful experiment rekindled Wang Huanqing’s teenage art dream. She wondered if she could combine paper-cutting and clip art together. After reviewing an album of paper-cutting works created by folk artists in Tonglu, a county in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, Wang decided that the monotonous traditional paper-cutting lacked changes, spelled various limitations, presented little room for her inspirations. She wanted to break away and create something original.

Her approach was to fine a perfect way for combining paper-cutting and traditional painting. She wanted her paper-cuttings look like a colorful painting. That doesn’t mean that her path to art had never been tried by predecessors. She knew Bao Jun and other artists in Yangzhou in the Qing Dynasty had explored the possibilities in this field.

She experimented and experimented. All the images were cut out of recycled colored leaflets, before they were arranged and pasted onto a background piece of paper to form a picture. The effect is winsome: an artwork of hers looks like a paper-cutting at close range, but like a traditional painting if looked from afar. Unlike conventional paper-cutting artists who scissor a complete paper-cutting out of a piece of paper, Wang cuts piecemeal and puts pieces together. And again unlike conventional paper-cutting artists who can complete a piece within several minutes, Wang works at a painstakingly slow pace. It usually takes her several days to design and complete a piece. A complex paper-cutting artwork can take her several months. “One Hundred Birds”, a large-size paper-cutting creation, took her two months to complete. Since 2003, she has created about 200 pieces.

Her explorations are exceptional and amazing.

A most impressive feature of Wang Huanqing’s paper-cutting works is its eye-catching colors. She prefers finest colors and spares no efforts to create the best effects for her images. Her way of creating a work allows her desired freedom to try possibilities: she cuts bits and pieces separately and chooses different colors for different details as allowed by the materials available. She once chose seven colors for the feather of a peacock. In order to recreate life-like images, she observes life closely.

Audiences can’t help but wow at Wang’s ingenious masterpieces. Her first solo exhibition was held at a place away from home. Visitors kept coming as the word of mouth spread and the exhibition was extended. At a charity show in Hangzhou In the early 2006, her paper-cutting brought in the highest amount of cash. In May, 2006, Wang sent her works to the organizing committee for a provincial folk art exhibition. Her works arrived after the deadline, but the committee, deeply impressed by the originality of her works, bent the rule and picked four pieces for the exhibition. They were hailed by experts and peer artists. In 2007, “Spring of Peace” by Wang Huanqing was selected for an exhibition in Japan. The masterpiece is now in the collection of Zhejiang Art Museum.

Wang Huanqing received her national recognition on November 15, 2008 in Beijing. She was granted a special prize, one of the only two top honors at the award-issuing event. It was at the ceremony that Wang Huanqing met her two disciples in person, one from Shandong Province and the other from Sichuan Province. A local primary school in Lishui has engaged Wang Huanqing to teach kids the unique art. Wang is ready to let more people do art her way.