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The Chester Beatty Library is currently hosting a retrospective of Chinese artist Hong Ling’s work until January 29th. The retrospective covers the full span of the artist’s career, featuring early works from the 1980s up to his most recent work of the past few years.

Born in Beijing in 1955, Ling studied oil painting in the years after the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–76). However, it wasn’t until he set up a new studio in the rural Huangshan that he really came into his own style. This workshop, based in the foothills of the Yellow Mountains, is where Ling works to capture the vistas that have inspired countless Shan shui (“ mountain-water”) painters for hundreds of years.

His pieces draw together the rough textures of oil paint with the fluidity and linear qualities of traditional Chinese ink drawings creating a unique approach to landscape painting. He thins his oil paints, a technique which works to create the distinctive calligraphic line of branches, loosening it enough to splash and flick the paint onto the canvas. This method is particularly effective in Ling’s attempt to show a dusting of fresh snow in a wintery Huangshan in the painting Delicate Wonder.

Hong Ling uses bold, vivid colours of the shifting seasons to immerse his viewer in the forestry of Huangshan. These paintings are on a massive scale; some take up the majority of the wallspace they are mounted on. As you stand in front of them your whole field of vision is taken up with overhead branches. You are submerged in Ling’s surroundings as if you are standing right next to him in Huangshan.

His ink on paper pieces are moodier, with only some of the pieces featuring a few dabs of colour. A small ink drawing, Landscape Study has been gifted to the Chester Beatty by the artist for the library’s permanent collection, on the occasion that the other pieces are moved to London.

My highlights are A Peak of Reds, a rich smattering of autumnal tones set off by a navy background, and Drunk in Frozen Forests, a gathering of coppery leaves enveloping a smooth patina lake. The exhibition is part of a touring retrospective sponsored by UNEEC Culture and Education Foundation and organised with Soka Art and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.