Peng Kanglong 彭康隆

b. 1962 in Hualien, Taiwan

Peng Kanglong is a literati-recluse artist who paints in the traditional landscape and flower genres. Having graduated from the Taipei National University of the Arts in 1988 with a focus on Chinese brush and ink painting, his major stylistic influences include the 17th century Monk artists Shitao (1642-1707) and Kuncan (1612 to after 1674), as well as the Modern landscape master Huang Binhong (1865-1955).

In the long history of Chinese brush and ink painting, landscape and flower painting are two distinct genres with their own metaphoric languages, painting techniques, representative masters and developmental histories. With the possible exception of Huang Binhong (1865-1955), Peng Kanglong is perhaps the first ink artist to explore the artistic possibilities of integrating these formerly separate genres. Whereas Huang Binhong's artistic breakthrough employs the brushwork of flower painting to transform landscape painting, Peng Kanglong works in the reverse direction employing the fine texture strokes and expansive compositional depth of landscape painting to render his extraordinary flowers.

Beginning in 2020, Peng Kanglong undertook an exploration of monumental compositional forms inspired by the Northern Song landscape. Combining the compositional scale of the Imperial landscape of the Northern Song with the expressive, autographic brushwork of the Yuan literati became an artistic goal of landscape painters in the periods that followed such as Shen Zhou (1427-1509) and Dong Qichang (1555-1636) of the Ming Dynasty, Wang Hui (1632-1717) and Gong Xian (1618-1689) of the Qing Dynasty and Huang Binhong of the Modern period. What distinguishes Peng Kanglong's "Grand Synthesis" is his integration not just of composition and brushwork from the Song and Yuan-Ming-Qing periods but also his simultaneous cross-integration of the encompassing landscape and flower genres.

Peng Kanglong's works have been recently exhibited in "Many Splendored Spring", New York Asia Week, New York (2023), "Feast of Verdure", The Historical Grand Courtyard, Taipei (2021), "Mukuteki", The Museum of Kyoto, Japan (2019), "Different Paths: Exploration in Ink", Sotheby's S|2, Hong Kong (2017), and "Shuimo: Ten Thousand Blossoms Spring", Sotheby's S|2, New York (2015) amongst others. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art, the Taipei Fine Art Museum, the Fubon Cultural & Educational Foundation, the Abu Dhabi Royal Family Collection, and the Fondation INK Collection in Geneva, Switzerland.