About the Artist
Xu Ming
Born in Shanghai in 1945, ancestral home in Fenghua, Ningbo, Zhejiang. An internationally renowned Chinese artist with over 50 years of artistic career.
Xu Ming graduated from Nanjing Light Industry Art College in 1968 and advanced his studies at Hong Kong Lingnan Art Institute in 1980. His 13 years of experience in Xinjiang filled his works with the vast desert and grassland scenery and unique Western Region charm. The towering Tianshan Mountains and the simple yet warm local customs made him feel the mystery and greatness of nature, profoundly influencing his artistic style and forming a tenacious personality and broad-minded spirit.
He moved to Sydney, Australia in 1980 and settled in Vancouver, Canada in 1986. During his over 40 years of overseas life, he visited art museums and master works in the United States, Canada, Japan, France, Australia, and other countries, absorbing more artistic information and gradually maturing his creations. His works blend the strengths of Eastern and Western cultures, full of musical rhythm and poetic imagery, incorporating Western painting colors and light into Chinese ink paintings, and infusing Eastern charm into oil paintings, forming a unique personal style.
It is worth mentioning that Xu Ming trained in martial arts under his father, a martial arts master, and won the Nanjing Martial Arts All-Around Championship (sword, spear, sword, staff, and boxing) for three consecutive years. This martial arts cultivation infused his later artistic creation with a unique sense of strength and rhythmic beauty, making his works both possess the freehand spirit of traditional Chinese painting and full of emotional warmth and spiritual exploration.
Xu Ming has deep affection for his hometown Fenghua, and has long inscribed his works with "Fenghua Xu Ming" to express his homesickness. In 2025, he decided to return and settle in his hometown, and donated 100 paintings to Fenghua at the "Bringing Spring Back Home" exhibition, and was appointed as "Ningbo Overseas Chinese Cultural Exchange Ambassador" by the Ningbo Overseas Chinese Federation. He plans to sketch more in Fenghua, creating works with his hometown landscapes as themes, using art to convey the beauty of China's mountains and rivers and promote cultural exchange between China and foreign countries.
Professional Positions
Art Director, Calligraphy and Painting Art Committee, UN World Culture and Art Development Foundation
Vice President and Art Director, China International Cultural and Art Exchange Promotion Association
Vice Chairman, World Chinese Calligraphers and Painters Association
Vice Chairman, China Calligraphy and Painting Art Industry Alliance
Vice Chairman, World Artists Association
Art Director, International Film and TV Star Calligraphy and Painting Academy
Visiting Professor, Beijing Oriental University
Ningbo Overseas Chinese Cultural Exchange Ambassador
Major Achievements
Collected by Great Hall of the People
Two works including "Border Scenery" permanently collected by the Great Hall of the People
Beijing Olympics Stamps
Two works selected for 2008 Beijing Olympics stamp first day cover
International Museum Collections
Works collected by National Gallery of Canada, Sydney Art Museum Australia, Taiwan Huagang Museum, etc.
Lifetime Achievement Award
Won Lifetime Achievement Award at 2019 First World Chinese Art Golden Brush Awards
Artistic Journey
Artistic Style
Xu Ming's creative themes are extensive, covering Xinjiang scenery in China, Canadian landscapes, Maitreya culture, flowers, birds, fish, insects, and elements of his hometown Fenghua. In artistic techniques, he blends East and West, incorporating Western painting colors and light into Chinese ink paintings, and infusing Eastern charm into oil paintings. His work style both inherits the freehand spirit of traditional Chinese painting and is full of emotional warmth and spiritual exploration, called "Heart Image Starry Sky".
He emphasizes sketching from life, insisting on drawing inspiration from nature, with footprints all over China, especially Xinjiang as an important source of his creation. His paintings combine the artistic conception of traditional Chinese ink wash with the color expressiveness of Western oil painting, with rich color coordination and spatial distribution, leading viewers to feel the attraction of the soul and poetic dwelling, experiencing the mood of leisurely watching flowers bloom and quietly observing water flow.
Xu Ming's works mostly take nature as their theme, using artistic vision to tell the primitive and beautiful story of green mountains and fields. He softens abstract, impressionistic, and figurative forms, forming his own unique style, with each work having its own language, not repetitive or identical. His paintings are like hazy poems, and like celestial music floating from the horizon, full of musical rhythm and poetic imagery, with the soul wandering in poem-like paintings with vast heaven and earth.