When refer to Liu Yun, his friends in the fine arts field will immediately think of his creation of the oil painting. From 1980s, he is outstanding in the oil painting field with his individualized form and lyrical design. In recent years, his oil painting has some new development: a kind of transcendental and symbolic element of emotion silently weaves into his painting. When waiting for his explorative achievement in this aspect, I accidentally find his landscape painting. I’m pleasantly surprised by his multiple talents in art, and also pleased by the fact that in the landscape painting field there are more and more gifted inheritors.
　　In the Chinese painting history, the landscape painting not only accumulates the largest number of creation, but also reaches the highest artistic level, and transmits the deepest national thoughts. In the classic creation of Chinese landscape painting, people can feel how the painter uses his individualized way to express incisively and vividly the feelings when human is along with the mountains, woods, springs and rocks.
　　With the coming of the foreign paintings and the rapid development of the modern technological pictures, the traditional landscape painting faces many challenges, and the most fundamental problem is how to solve the problem of the exhaustion of both the natural and the spiritual resourses. The travel sketch which advocated by Li Keran and some other masters dozens of years ago has long been coldly treated. The pursuit of literati use of brush and ink is now surpassing the recognition of the individualized form. It must be admitted that the fully exertion of the interests of brush and ink accords with the laws of the development of the Chinese painting, and is beneficial to the representation of the painting quality, but it doesn’t tally with the special requirements of the landscape painting. It makes the style and the picture of the nowadays landscape painting become more and more monotonous and tedious. The most attractive elements of the landscape painting—the artistic situations which formed by the blending of the nature and the human spirit—are not so commonly met in so many landscape paintings. What we lack is not the landscape paintings, but the landscape paintings where emotion and scenery are in perfect harmony.
　　Liu Yun is a beginner in the landscape painting area, and he has different levels of problems to be settled, but he also faces the challenges which exist in the whole landscape painting art. From his landscape paintings, we can see how the new generation react to these challenges. I think there are two aspects which deserve special attention in Liu’s landscape paintings: one is his structural management of the natural scenery, the other is his absorption and alteration of the traditional landscape picture. He was born in Hunan, and works in Hunan. The special charm of the landscape of Sanxiang is melted into his emotion, which makes his painting tranquil and glorious. However, he doesn’t bring the actual landscape into his picture, he picks the most appealing segments to make the magnificent situations. The ancient landscape painters usually use “half side” or “one corner” to make some neat and small scenes, while Liu Yun uses them to make grandiose pictures. In those pictures, the dazzling waterfalls and clouds wander in the serene and deep mountain forests; the vivid woods and bamboos set off the caves and the brooks; the coquettish branches of the bamboos and the woods interblend interestingly with the hard and erective outlines of the rocks. Yet the farmhouses which tinged with ochre and khaki add some warmth of human world to the tranquil mountain forests. The white space left by the ink makes the galloping waterfalls and wandering clouds, which are very important to his structure of the painting. They divide the ink wash, and change the integrative mountain forests into a somewhat abstract picture. In the depiction of the forests, rocks, and houses, Liu Yun maintains the style of the traditional literati landscape painting, which makes his picture full of literacy, elegant and serene. In the meanwhile, his clever manipulation of the colors integrates the rich hues with the pure ink wash, which not only makes his paintings appear to be vivid and active, but also embodies the seasonal characteristics of the mountain forests. As a painter who is engaged in the oil painting for many years, Liu Yun has his own method in the treatment of space. In the landscape painting, the occasionally appeared vast sky will suddenly divide the crowded mountain forests, but he is very moderate in his use of space scenography—he can feel a problem, that is, the unrestricted use of space scenography will always decrease the national cultural sense of the paintings. It is a successful experience which can be used as reference for many painters.
　　On the whole, Liu Yun’s landscape paintings of the recent years express a sincere painter’s  endless love for the landscape of his homeland. His eyes and his heart are always focused on the landscape of Sanxiang, so he can produce these impressive landscape paintings. Certainly these group of paintings I see are only the initial creations of his traditional landscape painting career. If compared with the classic landscape paintings, we can feel the differences of the general power and the use of brush and ink. It seems that his paintings are swift and delicate enough, yet lack some power and massiness, but it may be the true quality of his artistic temperament. He is believed to bear the landscape of Sanxiang in mind forever, stick to his own individuality, and then blaze a unique new way in the landscape ink painting.
　　(Beijing, August, 2006) 
　　Shui Tianzhong: Researcher of Chinese Artistic Research Institute, Vice- Director of the Theoretical Arts Committee of Chinese Artists’ Association