国家一级美术师 · 中国美术家协会理事 · 湖南省美术家协会名誉副主席 · 湖南美术馆首任馆长
National First-Class Artist · Council Member, China Artists Association · Honorary Vice-Chair, Hunan Artists Association · Founding Director, Hunan Art Museum
Wei Huailiang (b. 1960) is among China’s leading contemporary ink painters and the founding director of the Hunan Art Museum. Schooled in the classical lineage of literati painting yet restless with its conventions, he has spent three decades renewing the ancient art of huaniao — ‘birds and flowers’ — and charging it with a thoroughly contemporary conscience.
His celebrated series Searching for Habitat, named a Work of the Year by China Painting & Calligraphy News in 2012, sets wild animals adrift in the concrete of the modern city; Urban · Space and On the Road fold high-speed trains and steel into the misted mountains of Song-dynasty landscape. Across them all moves a single recurring presence — a small, watchful bird that critics have come to call ‘a thinking bird.’
魏怀亮（1960年生）是中国当代具代表性的水墨画家之一，湖南美术馆首任馆长。他深植于文人画的古典传统，又不甘于传统的程式，三十年来不断为古老的“花鸟”——中国人描绘生灵世界的艺术——注入彻底当代的良知。最负盛名的《寻找栖息地》系列获《中国书画报》评为“2012年度作品”；《都市·空间》《路上的风景》则把高铁与钢架叠入宋人山水的烟岚。贯穿其间的，是一只反复出现、警觉的小鸟——评论家称之为“一只会思想的鸟”。
As a painter of birds and flowers, I naturally love flowers and birds — but most of all I love birds. Their feathers shine with every colour, their songs are sweet and winding, their lives brim with vitality. They take to the sky, walk the earth, enter the water; they travel by flight, converse by song, and dwell — as the poet said — poetically. They are the freest creatures in all of nature.
A bird is free because it can fly; a human being is noble because we can think. The ancients formed the character for ‘thought’ from ‘heart’ and ‘field’ — the heart’s field must be watered by thinking. Bird-and-flower painting is just such an art: an art that waters the heart, a uniquely Eastern way of giving form to thought and wisdom.
In all the natural world, is there anything freer than a bird? There is not — unless it be another bird. In all the garden of art, is there anything more beautiful than a flower of thought? There is not — unless it be another thought.
I wish to be a bird. I wish to be a thinking bird.
作为花鸟画家，自然爱花爱鸟，但我最爱的还是鸟。鸟的羽毛五光十色，歌喉委婉动听，生命充满活力。她们上得天下得地入得水，以飞翔的方式旅行，以歌唱的方式交流，以诗意的方式栖居，是自然界最自由的生灵。
鸟之所以自由，是因为她能飞翔；人之所以尊贵，是因为我们会思想。古人造字以心田为思，是说我们的心田要靠思想来滋润。花鸟画就是一种滋润心田的艺术，一种独具魅力的东方式表达思想智慧的艺术。靠着这种艺术，我们解读自然，解读生活，同时也解读自己。
在自然的世界里，还有什么比一只鸟更自由的吗？没有了。如果还有，那就是另一只鸟；在文学艺术的百花园里，还有什么能比思想之花更美丽的吗？没有了。如果还有，那就是另一种思想。
我愿作一只鸟，做一只会思想的鸟。