Sky of Faith

ABOUT THE ARTIST

ADing

A Ding is an artist who was born and raised in the area between Sichuan and Tibet, and hence possesses the forthright, free, and uninhibited personality of the people from this area. He later left Sichuan for Yunnan and lived for many years in the city of Lijiang where he used his own solid ability to draw to create his own artistic world. Later on, because of repeated invitations from friends, A Ding moved to Xi’an city where, because of Xi’an’s grand historical heritage and heroic Qinling mountain culture, he settled down to live. In Xi’an, A Ding became even more obsessed with artistic creativity.

After several years, A Ding animated his paintings with his own life sentiments, and even today his artistic expressions of the lofty snow country are even more profuse with emotion. In his artistic creations, moreover, the paintings that he loves the most, that he is best at painting, and that he is most careful about, are paintings on the theme of Tibet’s snow lands. A Ding has many times visited Tibet, has become close with Tibetans, knows well the culture in the Tibetan regions, and has taken his familiarity with this region and transformed it into an emotional familiarity. In his terms, when he looks at the Tibetan regions, he is not merely seeing the regions but rather a great land of sanctity and spirituality that implies a kind of wonder that exists in the world, a place that allows people to meditate, prostrate themselves, and communicate with spirits.

In his heart, A Ding felt a deep love for Tibet because Tibet charmed his spirit and became a force for artistic inspiration. Over the years, the reason that he kept going to Tibet again and again was just because this inspiration attracted and fascinated him. Every time he went to Tibet to draw and to photograph, he wanted to record such feelings. Later on, he used a paint brush meticulously to portray all of these supernatural signs, to give them a lifelike depiction, and to allow the sacred images of these lofty snow lands to exist forever in our minds.