East meets West: Chinese artist embraces Bitterroot beauty

Where words to express his love for the beauty of the Bitterroot are difficult to find, Jin Huang’s brush strokes say it all.

From them emerge every detail, every color, every feeling that captures the very reasons settlers were once drawn to the valley’s rugged, pristine landscape, blooming meadows, and its majestic, snowy peaks – and with a brilliance that almost transcends its very nature.

By KAY WOODS Staff Reporter

http://www.ravallinews.com/articles/2004/04/07/news/znews01.txt

To this artist, whose native land is half a planet’s journey from where he now calls home, art is more than just a way of life. It is his life.

His love of the Bitterroot is the subject of at least 100 paintings that either fill his studio or are hanging on display in his Far East Restaurant on First Street, in Hamilton.

And life here has treated him well, he says.

Several of Huang’s pieces are on display in Big Fork, Bozeman, Great Falls and in other surrounding towns and cities.

While he and his wife, Rong Yan, can call themselves Montanans, many of Huang’s paintings have found homes around the globe, and have been entered into world-famous auction houses, including Sotheby’s, and Christie’s in New York City.

With just the right mood music – classical mixed with sounds from the Orient – turned on in a small room near the dining area of his restaurant that serves as his studio, Huang prepares to paint. After thoughtful consideration, he begins to brush the canvas smoothly and methodically, eventually filling its space with timeless images of what Montanans love about their native land.

Almost like a mosaic, small, intricate strokes and brilliant hues wed to re-create the untouched spaces of Lolo Pass, Trapper Peak, area ranches, or wildflowers beneath a snowy mountain peak.

One painting takes anywhere from one to three months to finish depending on the complexity of the piece, Huang said.

Born in 1943 in Wenzhou City, in the province of Zhejiang, China, Huang graduated from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in 1963, where he focussed on oil painting. Five years later, he was appointed as a professor there, and where he taught for 16 years, according to a biography, available in his restaurant.

After a cultural and political revolution broke out in China in the mid-1970s, Huang and Yan were forced to leave their professions by their country’s governing regime, said Earl Brandon, a Hamilton friend and interpreter for Huang and Yan, who both understand English, but are not fluent in speaking it.

As a result of the revolution, the government pulled Huang out of the art academy, and Yan out of music school, where they both taught as professors, respectively. Yan was an accomplished cellist and pianist who performed with the Zhejiang state orchestra, and who toured all of China several times, Brandon said.

Yan went to work for a tourist business in Shanghai, Huang on a potato farm in northern China.

Thousands of people were pulled out of their professions by the Chinese government, "afraid of people with education and training," said Brandon.

That played a big role in their decision to come to America, and why they didn’t go back except to visit, Brandon said.

After moving to the states, Huang entered the University of Montana’s exchange program as a visiting professor in Missoula in 1984, while Yan worked at an area Chinese restaurant. Due to language limitations, Huang left the university, and in 1986 he and his family settled in the Bitterroot.

With few assets except a mastery of his art, and a panoramic view of the valley, Huang began to paint. But as building any business takes time, particularly in art, Huang needed a means of supporting Yan and their two children.

With a loan from a family friend, he and his wife opened the restaurant. Eventually with that, and having sold a lot of paintings, the family became firmly established in the Bitterroot.

In a story told by author Yie Lou about Huang, "shortly after his move, he told me jokingly with a smile: ‘I am now named Man of the Rocky Mountains.’"

The couple has two children who have also made tracks in the art world. Zichao, their son, graduated from New York City’s Pratt Institute and is a graphic designer and painter in Los Angeles. Their daughter, Jie, received a master’s degree in architectural design from Cornell University.

From the late 1980s and into the 1990s, Huang’s pieces have been on display at various exhibitions in major cities throughout China, in Hamburg, Germany, and in the United States from coast to cost, as well as features in a host of shows in the American West, according to his biography.

In 1993, two of his Bitterroot paintings received Best of Show and second place awards in the 14th annual Montana Interpretations Juried Art Exhibition.

His work has appeared in various Chinese art publications, and a host of other exhibitions where he featured oils, landscapes, and an occasional portrait.

Huang and Yan say they’re now hoping to sell their restaurant, which would allow them to re-visit major cities in China and devote more time to selling Huang’s work.

Brandon said his paintings have sold anywhere from $40 for prints, to $10,000 for originals.

Huang plans to enter some of his work into the Treasure State Invitational Art Show at the Daly Mansion, in July.

As often as retirement from restaurant duties may afford Huang and his wife time to travel, and more time to paint, he’ll always return to the Bitterroot, he says. To a pastime where his view of nature’s virgin qualities paints at least a thousand words. As for saying them in English, three will do for now.

"It’s very pretty," he says.

Reporter Kay Woods can be reached at 363-3300, ext. 28, or at [email protected]