Tang Wei Min is a Chinese painter from YongZhou, Hunan Province. He studied at the Art Department of Hunan Standard College and the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. He has received notice and awards in China, the U.S. and Canada.
I first wrote about Tang’s work back in 2008. At the time, I noted that he did not appear to have a dedicated website or blog, and that may still be the case. (I say that with some reservation because Chinese language sites with no English translation can be difficult for me to find.)
There are, however, several sources for images of his work.
Tang appears to have a fascination with Baroque era Northern European painters — in particular, to my eye, Rembrandt, and to a lesser extent, Vermeer. I see the former in the deep chiaroscuro of his compositions and the combination of thin darks and impasto highlights that often characterize the Dutch masters’ approach.
Tang’s subjects, however, are distinctly Chinese. They are portraits and figures, mostly of young women, in what I take to be traditional Chinese ceremonial dress, possibly from different regions of China. These are rendered in a combination of refined passages and areas of rough, textured pant. The effect is quite wonderful.
There is also a similar contrast between his muted largely earth tone palette and areas of higher chroma color.
I noticed among his pieces, fairly direct nods to Dutch master works like Vermeer’s Girl with a Red Hat and Girl with a Pearl Earring.
[A NOTE OF CAUTION: Unfortunately, one of the very best sources for images of Tang’s work is on a site called Kai Fine Art. On visiting this site recently, I noticed it appears to be compromised.
Twice, on entering the page and attempting to click on an image, I encountered a full-screen pop-up that insisted that Flash Player was out of date and presented a link to download. This is obviously bogus, and a link to malware. It seems to be related to an ad in the right-hand column that extends an invisible link out over the image column.
I was able to bypass it and get to the images. However, I’m using Chrome for Mac, and your experience may be different — particularly if you’re using Windows. If you decide to visit this site, I urge caution. I only offer it because it’s such a great source for Tang’s images, and I hope the site author can correct the issue.
Link to currently compromised page: http://www.kaifineart.com/2014/08/tang-wei-min.html ]
The other links provided below should be without problems.
[Addendum: Thanks to reader Nadia, we have links to what appears to be Tan Wei Ming’s official site. Unfortunately, the images are small, and the magnify feature is awkward and not very usable. There is additional information, however, if you’re willing to use Google Translate (or if you can read simplified Chinese). See this post’s comments for additional information and links.]
