Clouds of Ink, Pools of Colour 墨雲彩池

Clouds of Ink, Pools of Colour: Paintings by Hou Beiren explores the splashed ink landscape painting tradition through the work of its foremost contemporary exponent. The California-based Hou Beiren has been exploring splashed ink techniques in his work over the course of the past four decades. Inspired by his friend, the painter Zhang Daqian (1899–1983) who revived splashed ink painting in the 1950s and 1960s, Hou has developed this painting tradition into a uniquely fluid and sensuous vision of hyper-colourful monumental mountainscapes.

Hou Beiren served briefly in the Nationalist government in Chongqing during the mid-1940s. He later abandoned his political career to move to Beijing where he exhibited and taught painting. Fleeing to Hong Kong in 1949, Hou later settled in northern California where he has painted and taught since 1956.

《墨雲彩池：侯北人畫展》通過研究當代最重要的潑墨畫倡導者侯北人的作品，探討潑墨山水畫的傳統。侯北人長居加州，在過去的四十年間孜孜不倦地鑽研潑墨技法。他深受友人張大千（1899–1983）的影響──畫家張大千在上世紀五十與六十年代復興潑墨畫，侯北人則加以傳承與拓展，建立出一種艷麗奪目、氣魄宏大的山水風格，筆墨流暢，別樹一幟。

上世紀四十年代中期，侯北人曾短暫任職於重慶的國民政府。隨後他放棄了政治事業，遷往北京任教繪畫和舉辦畫展。侯北人於1949年逃難至香港，再於1956年前往北加州定居，自此在當地致力創作與教授繪畫。

Kevin McLoughlin is a curator and art historian of East Asia specialising in China.