Mother Nature inspires artist’s woodcarvings

“One day, when I was fourteen years old, I was in my father’s fishing boat, sailing on the sea outside of Lukang, a small town beside the ocean, close to Changhwa. The wind over the sea outside Lukang was famous for its strength. When it hits you, it’s just like a knife cutting you. I really didn’t like that feeling. I didn’t want to be an object under a knife for the rest of my life. Rather, I wanted to be the one holding the knife. So, I told my father that I wanted to be a woodcarver.”

Now, his works are on special exhibition until April 2 at the National Taiwan Craft Research Institute in Tsao-tuen, Nan-tou County.

It took five years of hard study, to overcome his disadvantage in woodcarving — he was too weak for woodcarving, which requires much strength to carry the heavy logs and powerful hands to manage the chisel and carve the hard wood.

Huang was born in 1952 in Lukang, where he has lived all his life. The environment of his youth consisted of temples and farms. This simple life is reflected in his artistic creations to represent a sincere natural spirit. He has incorporated many lotus flowers into his work, which are a symbol of Buddhism.

His favorite subjects also include things from the farm: loofah, bitter gourd, crooked-neck squash, sweet corn, turnip, legume, pumpkin, cabbage, cow, duck, chicken, rat, bird, snail, cricket, grasshopper, cicada, spider, dragon-fly, bugs, and of course fish!

These subjects have been part of his life since his childhood, and he therefore has the ability to recreate them realistically and full of life in wood.

I asked Mr. Huang why every one of his carvings of vegetables have insects or animals with them? He said, “To draw the dragon, you have to paint the eyes. The immobile leaf needs to have some moving things on it. Beside, animals and plants are in harmony in the universe.”

It is amazing to see all of the items of art produced from the same piece of wood. Nothing is glued, and even those tiny hairs on the stem of the lotus flower are carved. I asked Mr. Huang, how does he do it? He said he used a triangle knife to snatch out the hair. It is really a “zero defect” production to reach this result.

Some of the lotus leaves are as thin as paper, and some leaves are rolled. It would not be difficult to use a brush to draw them, but to use a knife to make this presentation is an entirely different story.

Woodcarving does have the variety of colors, but the item itself seems to show the colors too. In a dried up broken lotus leaf, the viewer can “see” the dark brown color, but in the lotus blossom he can also “see” the shades of red and pink.

One piece entitled “Gracefulness” has a lotus leaf, lotus flower, and a stem with lotus seeds. They all seem to sway in the summer breeze. In another entitled “Harmony,” a kingfisher stands on the lotus seeds with a pair of watchful eyes, like he is protecting the seeds from being eaten by insects. “Looking at the Heart,” depicts a bird looking at the center of the lotus flower, where a seedpod is just beginning to grow.

“Keep Working” is a snail crawling on a bitter gourd. The snail’s two antennae, half of its body outside its shell is trying to crawl up the bitter gourd. The circles on the snail shell, the small antennae, and the bumpy skin of the bitter gourd all look realistic and full of life. In other carvings, Huang displays the intricacies of carving through the fins of a fish, the curled rat’s tail, the sections of the dragonfly’s long body, the jumping frog, the legs of a big beetle, the alert eyes of the gecko. All these small creatures come alive under Huang Ma-ching’s skillful hands and talented mind.

Huang Ma-ching has participated in many major exhibitions in Taiwan and aboard. His masterpieces are not only admired by viewers in Taiwan, but also by foreign critics in New York City and Paris. He has won many first prize awards in those exhibitions, and many art critics give him very high marks. But this humble artist doesn’t have the slightest bit of arrogance.

It usually takes him a week to finish a small item, and a large piece will take him several months to complete. He believes that among all the art forms, woodcarving is the most difficult. Since the other arts, such as watercolor painting, oil painting, and sculpture are “adding” arts, where the artist puts more on. Adding is easy to control, and mistakes are easy to correct. But the woodcarving is a “subtracting” art. The knife cuts the wood less and less. If the carver makes one wrong cut, it is gone with no way to take it back.

“The surface of a wood carving consists of rises and depressions, which is a big challenge.” Huang says. He has about one hundreds different kinds of knives to work with, depending on what the art requires.

Huang says, “Nature is the best teacher for the artist. Many people have said that to be an artist, one needs talent, but I think the hard work, sharp eyes, a delicate mind, and a sympathetic heart are very important qualifications for an outstanding artist.”

The greatest Chinese philosopher and educator Confucius said that the Book of Poetry was a book of birds, animals, insects, and fish. Indeed, as this great book described and venerated nature, it is a book of beauty. Looking at Huang’s wood carving, I could not forget the contents of the Book of Poetry.

Subscribe to The China Post and save 25%. Click here

SharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Enter your comments - 3000 characters max

Type in image code

Submit

 Receive China Post promos Respond to this email