Colorful Sanxingdui | Sichuan Province Meticulous Painting Society's PresidentWang Shenyong

"I think the disappearance of Sanxingdui may have something to do with tribal conflicts..." Talking about Sanxingdui, Chinese Artists Association member Wang Shenyong grew enthusiastic, launching into his speculations about every detail of Sanxingdui history and culture.

Born in Sichuan's Pengzhou City and being close to animals in the countryside from a young age, Wang Shenyong is currently one of the most popular painters of wildlife in China. Under forty, he has won 6 gold awards, 3 silver awards, and 2 bronze awards in exhibitions at home and abroad, and his Traditional Chinese Realistic Painting of Beastshas been used as a text for various art institutes in China. In his wildlife paintings, he tends to choose nature as the setting, fully showcasing his humanistic concern for animals, ecology, and nature.

In the 1990s, when Wang Shenyong visited Sanxingdui Museum for the first time, he was intrigued by the mystery of the cultural relics on display. Wang Shenyong told us: "Even today, Sanxingdui'scultural relics' shapes are really avant-garde!" He thought that as a painter who was exploring contemporary art, he was amazed by the exaggerated, simple but powerful shapes of Sanxingdui's cultural relics, and believed that this reflected the ancients' advanced aesthetics and bold creativity.

'Nature' was the key word that drove Wang Shenyong to take part in the 'Colorful Sanxingdui' artwork creation project.

Therefore within his work, he drew inspiration from nature. "I speculate that mineral pigments such as cinnabar already existed during the Sanxingdui period, and it is possible that the Sanxingdui's cultural relics were at that time actually painted." He believed that the Sanxingdui cultural relics were painted using natural pigments such as mineral pigments, but after thousands of years most of the colors had gradually faded away. At the creation site, Wang Shenyong chose to use mineral pigments such as cinnabar and deploy the painting techniques of traditional Chinese painting. He traveled through 3,000 years, coloring the bronze figure and bringing it to life using the beauty of nature.

It is worth mentioning that red, yellow, and blue were the main colors in Wang Shenyong's creation, and that this was because he thought that the three primary colors were the most basic and natural colors. Besides, Wang Shenyong also told us that in his eyes, the declineof Sanxingdui Kindomwas usually accompanied by wars or conflicts, which cast a tragic shadow over the relics. Therefore, he decided to use more red in his work. Wang Shenyong invited the public to take part, saying "Let's paint Sanxingdui together!"