After a last minute change of plans I decided to feature oil painter Qiang Huang in today’s artist review.
Like many artists, Qiang Huang (pronounced Chong Wong) isn’t a full-time professional painter. He stated recently in his daily painting blog that he’s an “optical engineer designing laser related systems for a high-tech start-up company.” It actually sounds interesting—and also very technical.
But no matter what he does in his day job, Qiang Huang’s work is definitely worthy of being called professional art.
If you visit Qiang’s painting blog you’ll see mostly still life paintings like the one above, which is entitled Texas Flower.
All of his still life paintings (and many of his landscape paintings as well) have a beautiful peacefulness about them. It’s such a perfect stillness that it would be cold if it weren’t for the intense, rich, colors that he uses.
There’s a certain vivid red that Qiang Huang always seems to fit into his paintings. It’s almost a trademark feature.
This painting, entitled Keller Marina 1, probably only exists to showcase that red sailboat.
But besides that, the simple clouds and loose reflections in the water also make this “sketched” painting very appealing.
As the title suggests, Qiang Huang created other paintings from the same setting, all of which can be seen on the landscape page of his portfolio website.
Other landscapes feature green meadows and simple buildings like the painting, Hill Country Cottage, below.
Qiang actually uses his brush strokes to circle this painting, visually compelling the viewers to center in on the focal point—this time an even smaller area of bold red.
And just in case the red door came across too strong amidst all that green, tiny dots of red are scattered elsewhere.
I could post a lot more great paintings by Qiang Huang but it’s probably better just to let you visit his painting blog yourself. Check out qiang-huang.blogspot.com and make sure to look for the link to his portfolio on the right side as well.
