Entering the world of landscape knife painting

Artists tend to keep blades away from their canvasses, but not in eastern China. We take a look at a very unique style of painting that produces art which looks like Chinese traditional painting and yet also resembles Western oil painting.

Though knife painting has been around for more than 70 years, it's actually a very cutting-edge technique, quite literally! The cutting procedure takes place after the artist has applied paint to the canvas.

Knife painter Zhang Gang said, "Knife painting is a fusion of Chinese traditional painting and oil painting, it has both the elegance of the former and the vibrant colors and realism of the latter, it's specialty is depicting landscapes, be it rocks, mountains or water. But it is not suitable for depicting people."

That's because the straight-forward knife strokes are done on wood, canvas and paper and it has limited capacity when it comes to defining detail.

Nevertheless, the technique is a valuable addition to China's fine arts heritage and has gained popularity in countries like South Korea, Singapore, Japan, the United States and even Great Britain.