李小可的人生际遇可以说亦艰亦幸。艰难的是他于1960年中叶从中央美术学院附中毕业后，就因中国社会的政治动荡而失去了继续升学的机会，未能得到连续的科班教育。幸运的是他生于艺术名门，有大师李可染作为最直接的良师，在“师牛堂”接续中国画艺术的正传薪火，得到别人所不能企及的条件。在他的艺术处于发展的时候，李可染先生过早地离开了世界，他因此要付出许多努力，和母亲邹佩珠老师一起操持李可染艺术的研究和传播工作，但是他并不放弃自己的艺业，而是更为坚定地执守父辈的艺术理想与文化精神，在传承中创造，在探索中突破，形成了既有“李家山水”精神品格、又有自己鲜明语言风格的丰厚成果。

　　在长期的艺术实践中，李小可总结出了“生活”、“精神”、“形式”三个重要元素，这三个元素既是他理解传统特别是理解李可染艺术的心得体会，也是他艺术创造的三个特质。从20世纪70年代末开始随李可染先生前往黄山写生开始，李小可就走上了深入生活的道路。面向自然，师从造化，这本是中国画传统的正途，然而由于历史的局限性，该法则一度被中国画界所遗弃，直到李可染先生将其与现实主义的创作观念联系起来，才有了新的意涵。李小可显然意识到写生对于新时期中国画创作的重要性，因此他继承了父亲的创作理念，坚持写生，在生活中练笔，练眼，练力，从写生中提炼创作的主题，在创作中保持写生的即兴感觉与鲜活意态。造化的魅力是他创作的灵感之源，对景写生亦成为他创作中不可或缺的部分，仔细品读他的大量作品便可发现个中真谛，也能让人真切地感受到他对自然的憧憬与感怀，领略到他内心的情怀与自然造化产生的共鸣。

　　在“生活”这条道路上，李小可深知要以自己独特的寻找和发现去丰富与充实“生活”的内涵，这就有了他走向生活的独辟蹊径。二十多年来，他的“生活”之路是开辟两个“极点”：一个极点是立足于都市。他在北京这个具有浓郁古都风貌的生活空间里徜徉，在宫墙内外、胡同深处发现人文自然的意韵，从人们熟知的景象中找到崭新的视角。这种立足于现实“生活”的方式实际上反映出一种新的艺术观念与态度，于细微处寻找真谛，将都市视为家园，像诗人一样怀着质朴的情感反复吟咏“生活”的生机，将熟悉的事物化为新鲜的篇章。另一个极点是远足独行，走向历史上少被表现、自己也不曾熟悉的生活空间，那就是一次又一次对西藏、甘南等藏族地区的踏访。在雪域高原的崭新视野里，他捕捉大自然的壮观景象和丰富多彩的民族风情，从而获得了新的山水丘壑。他在这两个“极点”中的反复穿行与深度体验，为他的创作提供了有力的支持，也在李可染先生的写生路向上做出了新的延伸。

　　艺术大家门第的熏陶与天然的蒙养使李小可获得了全面的艺术禀赋，而亲历20世纪80年代中国画坛关于传统与革新的激烈论争，也促使他思考如何继承传统与自我创造。他深知中国画艺术的文化魅力在于“精神内涵”，无论是面对藏区的第一自然，还是面对都市的第二自然，李小可都意欲表达自然的生命，在作品中体现自己的精神世界与自然世界的同一性。在如何表达“精神”这个课题中，他不是空泛地谋求，而是使精神落在实处，这就有了他对笔墨形式的自觉和长期探索。也可以说，最终使李小可水墨艺术自成一家面貌的是他用艺术形式来统摄“生活”与“精神”这两个方面所做出的实实在在的努力。

　　当李小可的《夏》和《宫墙》这样的作品出现在中国画坛的时候，所有的画界同仁都感到视觉为之一新!人们为他用如此独特的视角、新鲜的结构和生动的笔墨“形式”画出大家熟识的都市景象而感到欣喜，也由衷赞叹。生动的线条勾勒出砖与瓦的历史，浓郁的墨色和绚烂的色调表达出都市的沧桑与悠远。尽管仅是一个侧面，但是他成功地实现了用水墨语言对都市家园的表现，创造出了崭新的意境，既突破了前人，也突破了自我。在他一系列的都市题材作品中，都可以看到他对于画面构图的用心推敲，既吸收了现代绘画的构成、色调、节奏等造型语言，又很好地发挥了笔墨的表现力，特别在线条的老辣和墨色的浑厚上体现出新的笔墨精神，使中国画的创新有了新的形式落实。同样，他在表达西藏风光的《山魂》、《喜玛拉雅的风》等作品中，大胆运用了强烈的黑白对比，画出了雪域高原雄强挺拔的气势。此外，在许多作品中，他将墨色与彩色有机融合起来，以墨色为主，同时用色彩构成画面的色调，在渲染中形成景色的生机。他在画面经营布局上导入“结构”的意识，在墨线与墨色中掺合色彩，注重画面整体的意境，突显作品的精神内涵，都使画面成为“生活”、“精神”与“形式”的统一体。可以说，是将感性与理性结合的产物。实际上，他正是以一个新的现代学者的思考来关注笔墨，并用笔墨表达现实。他作品中的“笔”与“墨”不仅仅是一种形式，而成为他表现生存空间和自然意境的方式，因此具有了文化观照的意味。

　　李小可先生的展览足以让人们欣赏他作品的精彩，而结合中国画当代发展的课题，他的展览和作品集的出版对于加深我们的思考有着重要的意义。他的艺术路向已经十分明确，他艺术的未来前景更让人期待。

　　中央美术学院院长

　　范迪安

　　Soulful Homeland of Ink-Wash---

　　A Trinity between Life, Spirit and Formality

　　The life of Li Xiaoke is a mix of difficult twists and fortunate turns, with the mid-1960 being his difficult period. It was the time when Li had completed his secondary studies at the secondary school in affiliation of the Central Art Academy and was forced to give up further professional studies due to political upheavals. Bur he was fortunate enough to be born into an artistic family, with his father, Mr. Li Keran , a master painter well-known in the art scene in those days. Li Keran personally taught his son about the art of Chinese paintings in his “shiniu” Studio, which gave Li Xiaoke an advantage over other students. Nevertheless, Mr. Li Keran died at an untimely early age, leaving his son alone in search of his own artistic path. Thus, Li Xiaoke had to endeavor twice the efforts, working closely with his mother, Zou Peizhu, to study the painting art of his father. Despite enduring hardship, Li Xiaoke wasted no time in learning and in art exploration. On the one hand, he lived up to the artistic ideals of his father and inherited his cultural spirit. On the other, he tried to come up with novelties and breakthroughs via in-depth studies of his father’s Chinese painting and traditional arts. Eventually, he succeeded in creating the “Li’s Family stylized Landscape Painting”, which features his own unique characteristics and distinguishable way of visual expression.

　　Over the decades in practicing art, Li has concluded that “life”, “spirit” and “formality” are the three essential elements that serve as the criteria for understanding traditional art and the painting art of his father. He regards them as the three special elements that constitute art creativity. Since the late 1970s, Li Xiaoke always went with his father to the Yellow Mountain to make life portraits of the natural landscape over there. This marked the beginning of Li Xiaoke’s deep going journey into understanding what life is. Traditionally, Chinese painting derives its conceptualizations via looking into the nature and learns from all kinds of natural beings. But there was a period of time in history in which the principle of learning from the nature had been abandoned by the painting scene in China. This period ended when Mr. Li Keran linked up this principle with the concepts of realism and a new set of values was born. Obviously, Li Xiaoke knew the importance of making life portraits in the development of Chinese painting during a new era in time. Guided by such belief, Li Xiaoke followed his father’s path and spirit in his search for art creativity. He persevered in making life portraits, practiced his brushworks steadily and trained himself to be extremely observant about his surroundings in everyday life. Through making life portraits frequently, Li manages to extract and refine the theme of his creative works. And in the course of art creativity, he is able to keep up his mood for making life portraits extemporaneously with a fresh mental attitude, The captivating charms possessed by nature is the source of his inspiration and making life portraits of natural landscape is an indispensable part of his art creativity, When we take a careful look into Li’s numerous artworks, we would discover the inwardness of his paintings, be able to feel his enduring passions for nature and his emotional recollections of days he spent in the wilderness. Overall, we can feel the resonance between his inner state of mind and the natural creations.

　　On his path in search for “life”, Li Xiaoke knows very well that he can only find it through his own extraordinary way, just like a lonely trailblazer, and subsequently, to enrich and substantiate the underlying context of “life”. For over twenty years, the “life” of Li has branched out into two “polarities”, city life and solo excursions to the nature. While Li was living in Beijing, which is a city pervaded with ancient charms and venerable scenes, he wandered about inside and outside the Forbidden City, explored the alleyways and uncovered the reminiscence of human culture underlined by the elegant nature. He managed to look at images that are so familiar to the common people from a brand-new angel. In face, the way how Li positions himself in real “life” somehow reflects a new kind of perception and attitude that he adopts towards arts. He finds truth in every detail in things that he got in touch with and considers the city as a homeland. He is like a poet, always praising the vitality of “life”

　　With his genuine feelings and presents to us things that we are so familiar with via new visual interpretations. The other “polarity” refers to Li’s solo excursions he had made to unfamiliar place and lands rarely explored by artists throughout history. He journeyed to Tibet and the Gannan Tibetan Autonomous region time after time; he was blessed with brand-new visions of life while he traveled in the snow-ridden highlands. He captured the magnificence of nature and the fascinating local traditions of the ethnic people, which had driven his spheres of imagination to expand boundlessly. Over the years, Li shuttled repeatedly between these two “polarities” and the in-depth experiences gained from them are the dynamic source of his creativity. By the, he has added new sequels to the series of life portraits left by Mr. Li Keran.

　　Being born into a prominent artistic family, Li was naturally gifted in arts and had been under the mentorship of his father, a master painter, since he was a child. During the 1980s, there had been a severe debate between adhering to traditions and adopting revolutionary changes going on within the Chinese painting circles. It was at that time that Li really pondered over how to cope with traditions and self-innovation. Li knew so well that the “spiritual context” of Chinese painting is the cultural essence which makes Chinese painting so forcibly attractive. Under this abiding belief, Li always tries to convey the vital force and spiritual charms of nature in his paintings, no matter what the subject matters are, be it Tibetan regions(primary nature) or urban landscape(secondary nature). All he wishes is to express that his own spiritual realm is actually identical with the natural world. When Li tries to visualize “spirit”, he is never devoid of substantial contents. He is always conscious about the kind of images and feelings created by the layouts of his brushworks. In fact, he is constantly on a journey of art exploration. The honest and toiling efforts exerted by Li Xiaoke in capturing “life” and “spirit” via his stylized ink-wash paintings have made his painting art one of its kinds.

　　When works of Li Xiaoke, like “summer” and “Walls of the Forbidden City”, appeared in the Chinese painting scene, everyone found his works visually revolutionary and original! The unique visual perspectives, the novel layout, the lively brushstrokes and the unprecedented “formality” in composition he applied in depicting common urban landscape are all the exquisite elements that made his so admiringly stunning and highly appreciated. In his paintings, the bricks and roof tiles talk about their own history; the contrast between dense black ink and dazzling colorful hues project the remoteness of the vicissitude city. Though his visual expression is merely an urban depiction seen from a special angel, but he managed to create a new-born reality to convey the concept of urban-homeland. This is a breakthrough from the traditional visual frameworks laid down by his predecessors when he visualizes his feelings through a new filter. In the series of works under “city” as their theme, we can see that Li had weighed his visual composition carefully in trying to strike a balance between traditional and modern layout of images, colorations and coherence between different applied elements. He had maximized the expressive power of ink-wash , well-revealed by his unscrupulous and imposing brushstrokes, to the extent of infusing a new life force into traditional Chinese painting. Much the same way, as in his works on Tibetan sceneries, “Spirit of the Mountain” and “Breeze blown over the Himalayas”, Li used strong contrast between black and white to portray the majestic magnificence of the snow-laden mountains. In many of his other works, the organic blend between black ink and vibrant hues, with black as the dominant color, had given a new lease of life to the depicted sceneries. Overall, Li is very conscious about the imagery conveyed by and “composition” of his visual expressions besides making careful sprinkles of colors in between inked outlined and inked patches. He wants to bring out the “spiritual context” underlying his depictions and create a trinity between “life”,

　　“spirit” and “formality”. It is the way how he admixes perceptual and rationality. In face, he thinks in the way of a modern scholar when it comes to express reality via ink-wash. The “brushstrokes” and “ink” are not just a part of “formality” but they are the cultural tools used in expressing living space and natural environment.

　　The exquisite works showcased in the exhibition of Mr. Li Xiaoke are a presentation of the contemporary development of Chinese painting, which can actually help us to develop critical thinking via looking closely into his displayed works and paintings that are collected in the painting album. He is already on the right career path in art and his future prospects are very much anticipated.

　　Fan  Di’an

　　President of China Central Academy Of Fine Arts