Born in 1941 Hubei, Shen Aiqi has been engaged in the exploration of the painting process since his youth, and in the late 1950s was already a dedicated student of great Hubei master Xu Song’an. As the decades passed by he immersed himself in the study of the “six canons” of Chinese art, creating a unique body of work grounded on the training he received under his master’s tutelage, yet very uniquely his own. For many years, Shen Aiqi rarely showed his paintings to others: it was only after he celebrated his 70th birthday that he chose to share his work with the world in a solo exhibition at Wuhan. This has caused a true sensation in art circles and beyond.
Shen Aiqi’s painting is majestic and vibrant, radiating a unique sense of life-force that is tangible to all who come into contact with it. Within his works are contained organic patterns of nature and energy. This is the kind of grandeur that can only arise when the artist merges with sky and earth, mountains and rivers, fusing his life-force with that of nature. For Shen Aiqi, the process of merging with nature and then expressing this oneness through his art is one of the greatest joys of painting.
