Macao artists Leong Kit Man and Tsang Tseng Tseng are helping keep ancient forms of Chinese ink painting relevant in the contemporary art world. Here, the pair speak to how new perspectives can complement traditional techniques.
The artist Leong Kit Man lies atop a 2-metre-long sheet of paper, pencil in hand. With meditative focus, she sketches the aerial view of a tiled patio – rendering every bloom, moss-lined crevice and pattern with intricate precision. Once the outline is complete, Leong will bring it to life with vivid colours she creates by mixing mineral pigments with water.
Meanwhile, in a different part of the city, another artist flicks her ink brush across the folds of an open fan. Tsang Tseng Tseng’s technique – like Leong’s – is traditional, but it’s a contemporary scene that unfurls: Macau Tower, rising in the distance, amid abstract renderings of rocks and shrubbery.
Both artists feature in “Modern Vision, Timeless Technique”, an exhibition currently being shown at the Mandarin Oriental, Macau. Born in Guangdong Province and raised in Macao, Leong is an expert in the gongbi and mogu techniques. She is known for her precise, colourful compositions. Macao-born Tsang, by contrast, is an expressive literati painter, inclined towards monochrome shanshui (mountain-water) landscapes. She adapts the style’s visual language to Macao’s changing cityscape through the lens of classical Chinese aesthetics.
The women are locally and internationally prominent Chinese ink practitioners. Both are engaged in nurturing Macao’s next generation of fine artists, and hold leadership positions in the city’s art scene. Leong is an assistant professor of fine art at the Macau University of Science and Technology, while serving as vice chairperson of the Macau Artist Society, director of the Yu Ün Chinese Calligraphers and Painters Association of Macau and vice president of the Macau Youth Art Association. Tsang lectures at the City University of Macau and serves as president of the Macau Contemporary Ink Painting Association.
Their work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across Europe and East Asia, as well as in the Chinese mainland.
Modern visions through timeless techniques
Ink painting is one of the world’s oldest living art forms, with roots stretching back over 2,000 years in China. It has splintered into distinct schools and styles over the centuries. Gongbi (meaning ‘meticulous brushstrokes’ in English) is known for its fine lines, vibrant colour and realistic detail. Historically favoured by emperors and the elite, it tends to depict birds, flowers and courtly life with near-photographic precision. Notable masters include the Song dynasty’s Emperor Huizong (1082–1135) and contemporary artists like He Jiaying and Wang Meifang, both still active today.
The style known as mogu (‘boneless’ in English) avoids outlines entirely, using layered washes of ink and colour to create soft, ethereal forms. An ancient artform revived by the 17th-century master Yun Shouping, it continues to evolve through living artists like He Shuifa, best known for his flower paintings.
Literati painting – Tsang’s speciality – is otherwise known as the Southern School of Chinese painting. In contrast to the more formal Northern School, literati embraces spontaneity. Historically practiced by scholars, poets and retired officials, not professional artists, it is all about personal expression. Literati paintings tend to depict natural subjects such as bamboo and plum blossoms, imbued with symbolic meaning and often accompanied by poetry. Historical figures like Wang Wei (active in the 8th century) and Bada Shanren (in the 17th century) left lasting literati legacies that still inspire painters today.
Tsang has a particular fondness for literati-style painting on fans, which serve as practical everyday objects as well as portable canvases in Chinese culture. Fans are the foundation of some of Tsang’s more experimental works, including The Radiance of the Starry River and Orchid Fragrance.
Two artistic journeys
Leong and Tsang share a belief in the importance of experimentation and continual learning; in marrying traditional methods with new perspectives. Each has been artistic for as long as she can remember, and both women are incredibly well-versed in their mediums from an academic standpoint.
“I don’t know if I chose traditional Chinese painting or if it chose me,” Leong says of her path. Growing up in Macao’s north, she spent countless hours experimenting with art tools in a local stationery shop – an activity she recalls as “intoxicating”. Leong was raised with an appreciation for art, as her grandfather was an excellent painter and calligrapher. Her passion blossomed at secondary school, around the year 2000, when success in local drawing competitions prompted her to study fine arts at Shanghai’s East China Normal University.
Leong returned to Macao in 2009 to teach art at a local secondary school. She spent three years guiding her students to victory in their own competitions, then decided it was time to learn more herself. Leong went on to earn a master’s degree at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 2014, then a PhD at Beijing’s Chinese National Academy of Arts in 2018.
When asked what she appreciates most about traditional Chinese art, Leong’s answer is its ability to capture a certain mood. While Leong respects the canon’s conventions, she also challenges the status quo by incorporating certain obscure techniques critiqued by traditionalists into her work. She summarises her past decade’s oeuvre as “creating new knowledge through the logic of materials.”
Tsang’s story is similarly rooted in childhood creativity; she could never ignore the allure of pen and paper. Encouraged by her mother to take art classes, Tsang enjoyed freedom of expression under the guidance of her teacher. Later, a fateful summer arts course led her to study traditional Chinese painting at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. There, Tsang found many opportunities to immerse herself in nature, happy to spend long periods in the mountains honing her landscape techniques.
She also travelled overseas, and credits stints in the US and Switzerland with broadening her artistic horizons.
Today, Tsang’s artistic style reflects her diverse experiences, blending influences from the Song and Yuan dynasties with later Ming and Qing masters while employing Western compositional methods. She is currently pursuing a doctorate at the China Academy of Art.
Finding inspiration in Macao
The two artists find great beauty in their hometown, a city boasting visual layers of cultural fusions. Leong is drawn to ordinary details: the worn red tiles of local temples, a gnarled old tree after it’s rained. Tsang, meanwhile, gets inspired by Macao’s landmarks – Nam Van Lake, A-Ma Temple and the Kun Iam statue regularly feature in her work. She credits the densely urban city with shifting her artistic style away from natural landscapes. “I became bolder [in Macao] and followed my own ideas more in my painting,” she says.
Tsang is also grateful for the international exposure Macao provides, pointing to events like the annual Macao Arts Festival and the Art Macao biennale that bring world-class art and artists to the city. Macao’s connectivity with Hong Kong and the mainland, as part of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA), also offers opportunities. Just this year, Tsang was invited to hold a workshop at Hong Kong's University Museum and Art Gallery and to participate in Art Basel Hong Kong.
For Leong, living in an up-and-coming arts city means juggling administrative roles alongside her creative practice – something she says has made her more “multifaceted and cross-disciplinary.”
‘A window for dialogue’
Within the next few years, Tsang and Leong both plan to publish books on traditional Chinese art. In hers, Tsang intends to combine years of practice with academic research into the legacy of influential literati painter Wu Li (1632 – 1718). Wu, who was born in Jiangsu Province, converted to Catholicism and became one of the earliest Chinese Jesuit priests after a period spent studying in Macao. Leong’s book, meanwhile, will cover the meticulous techniques behind various Chinese flower and bird painting styles. She would like it to be published in Chinese, English and Portuguese, thereby enabling a wider audience to experience what she describes as the healing powers of Chinese art.
As artists, Leong and Tsang see Macao as a place where creative innovations and traditions sit comfortably together. “Although Macao is small, our position in the GBA means we have the potential to become a window for dialogue between the East and the West,” Tsang reflects. Leong, meanwhile, says she aims to “break through the boundaries of classical traditions and establish new classics.”
Text Weng-U Pun | Photos Cheong Kam Ka
