Splendid New World in Straw Paintings

Text and photos by Li Hui

On the morning of October 7,an old man named Deng Youpu,dressed in a Tang suit was absorbed in coloring the fish on a painting with a soldering iron in his studio in Sanfutan Town,Xiantao City,Hubei Province,China.

Deng's family has had a reputation for painting wheat straw pictures for centuries.Deng Youpu,born in Lao Jie,Sanfutan Town in May of 1948,is the sixth generation in his family to practice this art.

The first straw painting can be traced back to the time when one of Deng's ancestors went to the thencapital to participate in the imperial examinations.This young examinee ran short of traveling expenses as he waited for the release of the examination results.Suddenly,he had a light bulb moment and found a good solution to tackle his financial problems.He pulled off a handful of straws in a field of wheat,and made several exquisite paintings with those straws.Surprisingly,with distinctive and unique styles,his straw paintings became sought-after articles and enjoyed great reputation in the capital.This art has been handed down from generation to generation since then.

Deng Youpu's father is a famous master of straw paintings.Deng's family managed to pull through financial difficulties with the help of this craft during the Republican Era (1912-1949).Deng Youpu was apprenticed to his father at the age of seven.Under the infiuence of his father,he gradually took an interest in this ancient folk art,and to his surprise,such enthusiasm has lasted all his life.At the age of 15,he became a minor celebrity,owing to his ingenious straw paintings.In the 1980s,the straw paintings developed and created by Deng's team gained a foothold in the market.In 2005,a factory that manufactured straw paintings was set up,whose products had been sold throughout the country.

Deng Youpu has devoted himself to the research and development of straw paintings for over thirty years.He has readily drawn from a variety of artistic expression methods,such as shell carving,woodcutting,wood blocking,and paper cutting,and has tackled difficult technical problems concerning the preservation of straw paintings.After dozens of procedures including cutting,bleaching,scraping,crushing,scalding,smoking,carving,and ironing,the once perishable straw paintings become precious works of art,which integrate as well various art forms such as calligraphy and painting.Deng Youpu was bestowed the title “Master of Chinese Arts and Crafts” in 2002 and was honored as one of “The Fifth Batch of Representative Successors of the Intangible Cultural Heritage at National Level” in 2018.

Among those who work with him in the studio,his son Deng Youjun is the most diligent.In reality,quite a few students have been apprenticed to Mr.Deng over the past thirty years,but most of them gave up halfway unable to bear the laborious and toilsome handwork in the manufacturing of straw paintings.Not only has Deng Youjun inherited the craftsmanship of straw paintings from his father,he also serves as a catalyst for their artworks to tap into the national and global market.

With the unremitting efforts of Deng Youjun,various channels for making their straw paintings known to the world have opened up.Their team has not only been invited to several exhibitions for Intangible Cultural Heritage nationwide,but also visited countries such as Russia,New Zealand,Kazakhstan,Poland,and so on along the Belt and Road countries with the Chinese delegation.Having undergone severe cold and scalding hot,the wheat-straws,manufactured in an ingenious and original way by the father and the son manage to send forth a special and brilliant sheen in this splendid new world.

One of Deng Youpu’s representative works entitled The Drunken Beauty 鄧友譜代表作之一《貴妃醉酒》