Rongjia Wei, born in 1990 in Shanghai, is a spiritual artist who has studied with the famous children's art education expert in China, Mr. Wenbiao Xue since her childhood. Under the influence of Mr. Xue’s philosophy “imagination through forms”, Rongjia has carried out a wide variety of creative painting activities, which has left an imprint deeply on her soul. In 2012 Rongjia graduated from Tongji university with a degree in animation and worked as a graphic designer for ten years. In 2017, she went on a hiking trip with friends and an accident happened. She fell from the mountain and tumbled all the way almost to the bottom of a valley. Surprisingly she did not only survive her life, but she did also not even break a bone. Since then, she has been on the path of spiritual practice, searching for her mission as a human being. In 2018, she took a leave of absence from my job, and attended a 2-month art study program at Rhode Island School of Design, which was also a remedy to make up for her own regrets. On this the journey to eternity she found the mission for her soul. In 2020, she became a spiritual artist.
“ I DRAW, THEREFORE I AM ”
Drawing has always been a language for me. It’s a dialogue between me and higher self. It's a comprehensible conversation and expression of higher energy. My purpose here is not to tell you what I think or what I see. I'm here only to show the conversation that I have between myself and material; my past and present; my lost and found. Creativity, generosity, patience and love. On my way to my spiritual world, it’s all about experiencing the senses, embracing the unseen around and presenting them into the material realm of existence. My drawings have a wonderful cosmic energy, which is like the universe is seeking to replenish, restore and create through me. I am the creator. By opening my heart with gratitude and "artist's hand", an all-encompassing emotional contentment will flow into the drawings. After 10 years running away from my own uniqueness, I finally made up my mind. I'm here only to tell my journey to eternity in this awaking world. And I will always be interested in the possibilities, and more so the impossibilities of drawing, painting and creation.
In my practice of spiritual art creation, I also try to break and escape from the continuity in thinking triggered by the “immediate representation” of things (the “appearances”). I objectify the same concept (the “energy”) and its immediate representations in the society (the appearances of matters) in different time and space, and then restructure them. This creates the continuity on the paintings, but it breaks the logic of common senses and leads to visual and spatial heterogeneity. That’s why many audiences have such comments that “these paintings don’t look like paintings of this world; they are more like of another world that you can only see with your eyes closed. It makes your heart peaceful, and you can feel your whole body falling into the paintings.” With resin, a very special material, I create a third dimension on the two-dimensional canvas. Such non-continuity is also a transformation of artistic situation. This often occurs in the process of my art creation and here is a simple example: the cup in front of me is RED in common sense. However, during painting, I would paint it with my own hands with the color BLUE. It is like reconstructive contextualism. In this context, I will create the framework with revolutionary, non-continuous images, seeking for “refreshing” or “shocking” awakenings from the old thinking, or in other words, the emerging of new thinking under a new construction.
Method: crystal painting
Such awakening is not limited to the content of my paintings. In this three-dimensional world, a painting consists of matters including “a two-dimensional image” and its materials. How do you deconstruct and redefine a two-dimensional image and its materials? My answer is the method of painting, which I call “crystal painting”. In the process of painting, I pour crystal glue (i.e., resin) layer by layer. Magic happens when resin is in between different layers – it’s like a third dimension created on a two-dimensional canvas. With the changes of lights and angles, there comes the change of scenarios, layers, and shades. Your eyes see the subtle differences, and your brain gives the signal that the painting itself is changing. It’s very much alike crystal, which reflects different radiance under different lights. As a creation method, the “crystal painting” artificially epitomizes the formation of amber in nature. When all the lights in the exhibition hall are turned off and the black light is turned on, the fluorescent pigments hidden in the painting reveal a new "trick". It’s deconstruction and redefinition of the audiences’ perceptions and they are filled with “refreshing” or “shocking” awakenings from the daylight views, or in other words, new images are borne under a new construction.
After the accident during hiking, I found the mission of my soul, and became a spiritual artist. Artists should be the pioneers of human culture. Unlike scientists, artists live to explore the “invisible” laws the world works. Throughout history, art has been in a twilight zone between science and philosophy/metaphysics. Art is my reconstruction of the "spirituality" of life lost in the commercial modern existence. The life of revolutionary spiritual artworks does not live in lifeless social appearances caged to a certain point in time. It lives in the living matters and spirts beyond time and space, which existed before, and may or may not exist now, but will forever live in the interactions between different people, between people and things, and even between different generations. You might find that such matters and spirits have similar appearances, regardless of the cultural backgrounds or times they were / are in. All the worlds are creation of our mind. As human beings, the core of our soul is beyond time and space, which can be destructed and constructed, for without destruction there is no construction. My mission is to explore, to live, and to create each piece of artworks with true life, which gives shocks to people’s soul as soon as they lay their eyes. If I am lucky enough to have the opportunity to break the obsessions of the audiences and help them a little in breaking from the old perceptions and creating new perceptions, then it’s a good thing already.
