Wang Yidong's representative works include (clockwise from above) Playing in the Bridal Chamber - Auspicious Smoke, The Pomegranate Is Ripe and Sound of Summer.

One of the country's most iconic painters, Wang Yidong emphasizes both technique and tradition. Zhang Zixuan reports in Beijing.

The bride's red quilted jacket and trousers stand out among the blue and gray-colored throng, enlivening the snowy mountain scene. As a child growing up in the Yimeng Mountain area of Shandong province, artist Wang Yidong memorized this scene and has repeatedly portrayed the girl in red on canvas. For example, at the upcoming 2012 Chinese Oil Painting Art Exhibition in London, Wang portrays a teenage girl in a red vest eating a ripe pomegranate. The painting's name, The Pomegranate is Ripe, is a play on words that indicates the girl's coming of age. The 57-year-old recalls the poverty of his hometown by recounting the story of his fifth uncle's wedding, when the fish dish at the center of the table was an imitation made of wood, with a coating of real sauce. But the country's leading Realistic artist believes poverty actually preserves tradition, which he defines as the "thick accretion of culture". Wang's relatives and his rural mountain scenes, and especially girls from the countryside in red clothes, have become the painter's signature subjects.

"I am a man. There is nothing more natural than appreciating feminine beauty," he says.

Wang's exceptional painting skills are due in part to seven years of training at Shandong Art School and then the Central Academy of Fine Arts during the 1970s and 1980s.

And even though he is aware of the huge variety of contemporary art forms, Wang sticks to Realism.

He rejects the idea of distancing himself from his audience and refuses to "be manipulated by the market or trends of thought".

"Painting can never abandon technique," he says, adding that great artworks touch the viewer because the underlying technique is outstanding.

Wang says the more he paints, the more difficult Realism is, for him.

Even so, he admits that despite the time and effort he spends on painting a Realistic work, viewers tend to be more critical because they can relatively easily detect the flaws.

"Those few of us who still pursue Realism are somewhat crazy," he observes.

Wang does not slavishly copy reality, however. He places realistic figures in imagined backgrounds, which seem real but have actually been "absolutized in terms of various emotional needs".

For instance, in some of his works that portray a snowy background, big black and white lumps of color are used, borrowing from the abstract technique of traditional Chinese ink painting.

Meanwhile, the emotions of his painted figures can easily be read, such as the bride's anxiety before the wedding, or a village girl's yearning for the outside world.

"Wang is trying to create the sense of abstract in a realistic image. Such abstraction reflects the purity of art, and somehow adds a bitter flavor to the work," comments artist Zhu Naizheng.

Wang admires Western artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Ingres and Vermeer, but he dares to question these masters and imitates their techniques in a selective way.

His one-year stay in the United States in 1987 and later overseas visits have convinced him that "even if techniques can be fully adopted from the West, nothing else can".

"I need to refine the subject out of my original culture," he says.

So Wang paints the Chinese red color of the village girl's quilted jacket and trousers in Western Realistic strokes. And he travels in rural North China and culturally similar places to his hometown, to seek further inspiration.

Art Magazine's Executive Editor-in-Chief Shang Hui describes this approach as "expressing Chinese human interest by the understanding of European Classicsm's aesthetic principles".

And it has been a successful approach. Wang's artworks have been exhibited in many countries and set records at auctions - but he is still ambitious.

"I have so many paintings to complete," he says.

His newest project features a huge rural wedding of more than 100 figures in Shanxi's Taihang Mountain area.

As a "rehearsal" for the painting that will have "intense sunshine", Wang spent one month in France and did more than 40 paintings in Provence, which is famed for its natural light.

The 3.5-meter-long and 1.8-meter-high work is expected to be finished by 2014.

"It will be my largest painting," he says.

Contact the writer at zhangzixuan@chinadaily.com.cn.