When artist Yang Ermin held his solo exhibition of water ink paintings at Beijing's Yanhuang Gallery, he invited his father to travel from Hebei Province's Baoding to the gallery at the Asian Games Village.

The 72-old mason, who is famous in his hometown for his vivid stone carvings, described his impression of paintings done by his son as "comfortable," even though some of the paintings deal with subjects seemingly alien to traditional Chinese ink paintings.

Simple, yet enough to make the 40-year-old artist feel complimented. Though the senior Yang might not know it, Henri Matisse once said that art should be comfortable like a big easy chair.

What his father said of his paintings also coincides with the comments of many art critics, who have been touched by the soothing ease permeating Yang's paintings, depicting still life, room views and garden landscapes, as well as people in household settings.

The world of his paintings is quiet and calm, with "Dr Andrew" (1997) sitting behind a table covered with nostalgically patterned tablecloth in one painting, while "Mrs Andrew" (2001) is busy with her plants in the garden in another, and a hostess muses in the corner of "A Cafe II" (2000). As well as fruit and flowers, which make a big proportion of Yang's still-life paintings, communication takes place silently and lazily with viewers.

Lang Shaojun, a researcher at the China Academy of Arts and a well-known art critic, once wrote that the world under Yang's brush looks "sincere and poetic with a sense of warm and gentle tranquility."

Painted with ink in different pigments on Chinese xuan paper, Yang's paintings also strike viewers with their harmonious hybrid quality. Textures are blended seamlessly with the fluidness characteristic of the watercolor style and the ripened shades of colors and light that originate from Western oil paintings.

Yang went to Japan in 1995 and is now a researcher at the Water Ink (Shuimo) Paintings Research Institute with the Japanese Eastern Art Academy in Nagoya. He said he grew up modeling from the Jieziyuan Painting Album, a manual on traditional Chinese ink paintings composed in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). He had to keep on painting from the album so he could tell the page number for a specific painting.

At the same time, he learnt about oil paintings and etching, which enabled him to pursue his own style in later days. His experiment with this new expression of water and ink started in 1992, when he gave the finishing touches to his painting, White Chrysanthemum, and realized what he had always wanted to do. Over the years, his unique style has been maturing and acquired more international recognition as an invigorating effort into the conventional world created with water and ink.

His first solo exhibition was held in 1995 in Tokyo and the current one in Yanhuang Gallery is the third one held in Beijing. Yang's paintings have also been invited to go on show in France and the United States.

The exhibition ends today and Yang will move on to participate in the international biannual exhibition of Chinese ink paintings to be held in Shenzhen on December 12.

(China Daily December 9, 2004)