Entering the 20th century, with the development of modern art and industrial revolution, many people begin to feel confused about the value and significance of painting. However, painting has a profound foundation in China. Compared with the art works produced and copied by machine, "easel painting" has its unique value of the consistency of hands, eyes and mind, which is also a goal difficult to achieve. Easel painting maintains the manual sense of painting, which has internal consistency with China's traditional art. Namely, the painters express thoughts and emotions through the application of material language.

　　Wang Haili, graduated from the Department of Oil Painting of Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts, is an excellent painter sticking to safeguarding the value of easel painting. He has a series of works about western China and sketches about European landscapes, which reflect the value of existence and personal dignity of oil painters in the era of industrialization. As an artist who accepted professional school training, Wang does not confine himself only in the depiction of nature, but created many distinctive works of visual narration by resorting to various artistic methods. He gives full play to his imagination in the process of drawing sketches. At present, the rapid changes of the modern society and the astonishing proliferation of the visual images have put forward higher requirements to the knowledge and imagination of the artist, which, as we have noticed, are deficient among the oil painters. This leads to the phenomenon that there are "more craftsmen than real artists". Therefore, how to maintain the visual image of the concrete objects in oil paintings and give full play to free imagination and concept penetration to expand the concept and emotion expression of the works has become a major task for the development of modern oil paintings. Following the artistic style of classical oil painting, Mr. Wang created some outstanding works depicting the historical picture of the Qin, Han and Tang dynasties and the heroic performance of the Chinese soldiers throughout the history with creative imagination and a deep understanding of traditional Chinese culture. His reprehensive works include "Unification of the Six States" , "Unconquerable Forces " and "Tang Emperor in the Battle" . In addition, Wang's works have a wide coverage, including the description of the living conditions of the modern people.

　　Mr. Wang's early works focused mainly about Xinjiang, Tibet, Qinghai, Shaanxi and other western areas. The representative works include "Taxkorgan Festival "(1982) and "Pagoda in Ngari" (1984). His recent works, including "Zhangqian of the Han Dynasty" and "The Great Khan of Tang Dynasty" , reflect Wang's continuous attention to the western areas along the Silk Road. The regional cultural characteristics with profound historical significance have great influence on the aesthetic style of Mr. Wang's oil works. Guo Beiping, a famous Chinese oil painter, comments that Mr. Wang's oil paintings are characterized by "concise and simplified color tone and extremely outstanding application of grey, white and black colors ". In addition, Mr. Wang has also written many academic papers, including The Painting Skills during the Italian Renaissance, On Subjective Psychological Temperament and Expression of Paintings and Subconsciousness during Art Creation based on a profoundstudy on western classical oil paintings. Mr. Wang also infiltrates the modern expression of lyricism into his oil painting. Many of his landscape paintings are themed on lofty mountains and high ranges as well as seas, which highlight sublime aesthetic spirit. The "language" of his oil paintings also has unique characteristics, sometimes delicate, while sometimes unconstrained. Mr. Wang is good at free expression of subconsciousness. He integrates the internal humanistic spirit of the classical oil painting art with the traditional Chinese art style, and has made inspirational exploration in the field of landscape painting. In his works, modern expression of traditional language has been realized by combining the realism of western classical oil painting and the lyricism of the Chinese painting.

　　In 2006, Wang studied at Ecole Nationale Superieure Des Beaux-Arts as a visiting scholar. During that time, he visited about 100 European museums and galleries. In 2010, Wang studied at Repin Academy of Fine Arts of Russia. During this time, he created a number of works about landscapes of Russia. His works reflect his in-depth understanding of European oil painting. At the same time, Wang also made a great number of highquality oil paintings. His sketches and works highlight "my observation" in that he views the nature in his own way and then composes the pictures from different perspectives to express his feelings about the world in a unique way. Composed by limpid, bright and real elements, the works show strong characteristics of oil painting, which are also the taste of the era felt and grasped by the painter.

　　Mr. Wang believes that the most important thing for a painter is not what he paints about but how he paints it because it is harder to find the right way of expression than showing off techniques. Different ways of expression will generate different artistic effects and show the subjective psychological temperament of an artist. Mr. Wang's works have the feature of a perfect combination of the ways of expression and the themes of the works. When he tries to express the motif through flatness and smoothness, he pays attention to transition from one side to another. When he paints with rough lines by using the skills of loose painting, he reveals the motif in a romantic and improvisational way. Mr. Wang has a unique understanding of the language of oil painting. He believes that every object and medium will become fresh and vigorous and shine with the light of art in the hand of a real artist. He emphasizes the consistency of the language and the mind. This requires the artists not only to express their feelings with certain art languages but think under the process, which is the reflection of the artist to the world and the painting itself. This is not a separate state of thinking that the artist first thought about something, and then consider how to express it, but a combination of all the factors involve in creation such as the reflection of the canvas, paint brushes, color and images.

　　Technique is the foundation of the painting language. In a certain period, it was a common phenomenon to pay too much attention to stories and themes while neglecting techniques among Chinese painters. As a result, for a long time, the Chinese oil paintings took the forms of museum illustration chart, colorful illustrations of books and picture posters. Technical language refers to a number of disposals made by painters, covering the overall arrangement and the rhythm, composition and spatial layout of shapes, colors and lines, and the arrangement and overlying of the color blocks, brushwork, the dryness and wetness degrees and intensity of pigment, the procedures for coloring and changes in brush and knife application. With problems in these aspects unsolved, profound art expression would be a fantasy.

　　However, Mr. Wang doesn't simply interpret painting language as technical language. The concept of "state" just indicates that painting language is the integration of mentation and techniques. That is to say, artists may directly touch the core issues of art and have an overall understanding of the world in their unique ways based on a long-term art activities. Mr. Wang's oil paintings are full of passion, focusing more on the spirit than form and rich in expression. The bitterness and sweetness, depression and fluency, simplicity and magnificence, freshness and gloom in his paintings express his understanding and feeling of the world and life.

　　Wang Haili is good at using dark black background to highlight the major images and bright color to express the spirit of characters and landscapes in his themed oil paintings. His representative works include The Tibetan Man, Certainly Win, Warmth, The Solemn Announcement, Battling Enemy in Their Back, The Veteran, and Qi Jiguang Conques the Japanese Pirates. His oil paintings about western landscapes, such as Immortal , Ancient Cypress, To Pass through the Mountainous Road to Meet the Bride, The Golden Great Wall and Xuanzang's Journey to Nalanda , also show the structure and texture of the paintings through intense light and shadow contrast. If we make these works into black-and-white photographs, there is an abstract structure of light. In fact, it is the tradition in the history of western oil painting to attach great importance to black and white colors. For example, Caravaggio, Frank Hals, Rubens, El Greco and Manet are all artists who are very good at application of black and white colors. Goya must be the one who made the best use of them, and his painting language is closely related to Spain culture. However, the application of black and white colors in the western oil paintings is different from that in the Chinese culture and paintings. Therefore, the question is how to learn from the western oil painting and integrate with Chinese oil painting? In this aspect, some of Wang's works, including The Beautiful High Mountain, The Mountain amid the Clouds, The Enjoyable Black Dragon Ridge, Families in the Black and Green Mountain, Taoism at Louguan and The Mountain in Wind and Snow, proves that Mr. Wang is making exploration to integrate the oriental aesthetics into oil painting to reflect his understanding about nature. Obviously, one day, Mr. Wang will reach the peak in art by combining Chinese culture with western painting and become successful.

　　Here we will talk about the understanding of the word "landscape". For a long time, there was no such a word in many cultures. It first appeared in the work (1549) of Robert Estienne, who was a humanist. It did not mean countryside scenery but a kind of pictorial representation. Two centuries later, the Encyclopaedia defined it as "a kind of pictorial representation of an area of countryside and all the things within the area". Leonardo Da Vinci introduced "landscape" in his work Mona Lisa to make the image artistic and the place a landscape. Landscape and nature are interdependent with each other. "A landscape represents a state of mind." The painters see the nature and then reproduce it with their brushes and show it to the people. Then, people see the nature again from artistic works and they begin to change the nature by building cities, parks, resorts and other manmade landscapes from the perspective of art. Because of industrialization, people find that we are far away from nature, and we just noticed the fact when we are losing the landscape, farmland, rural residents, clear sky and clean lakes.

　　Mr. Wang painted the western landscapes and the special European cultural and geographical features with his multi-layered and unstrained brush strokes. For example, his Blue Venice, St. Mark's Square in Venice and the Church of St. Mark in Venice are about the places that used to appear in the works of Camille Pissarro, a wellknown French master in impressionism, while his Penglai Fairyland is based on his imagination about the history. These landscapes, whether they exist in reality or not, are natural revelation of the landscapes in the painter's mind. Here we can find the internal power of the works, which could be traced to his internal composition of the paintings. I called it "internal composition", because there is no obvious intentional arrangement for the composition of the works, though the works do not seem disordered or discursive. The painter does not pay too much attention to the real form of the objects. Instead, he tries to express his feelings through these objects.

　　Some of Mr. Wang's small-sized works , such as The Potala Palace, The Top of Pagoda, The Morning at Jiuzhaigou Valley and In the Misty Mountain , obviously reflect his interest in color texture. Such distinct texture is not just for the description of the real physical texture, but conveys the painter's inner feelings through the color layers. What's more, the feelings do not just come from the visual effect of the landscapes, but from the emotional impact caused by the landscapes in the mind of the painter. The brush strokes and texture sensitively reflect the painter's mental state. This method is actually the essence of the traditional Chinese ink and wash paintings and the characteristics of the Action Painting style represented by Jackson Pollock in modern art, both striving for the consistency and coordination of the mentality of the artists and the objects.

　　Mr. Wang's oil paintings, which seem in a classical and traditional style, actually reflect the modern peoples' concern about nature and environment. It also shows his confidence and persistence to the development of Chinese oil painting. Mr. Xu Jiang, a well-known oil painter, believes that the current task for Chinese artists is to figure out a way to promote the interaction and coexistence between serious arts and popular arts and find an exit for traditional art to develop further. At present, it is hard to find any paintings at large international exhibitions as video facilities are increasingly widely used. Under such circumstance, what's the future of painting? Mr. Xu said, "The artists must stick to the core task of painting which aims to arouse the sensibility of people and light the humanistic concern again so that we can return to nature and restart from the traditional origin to seek for multiple interactions and harmony in diversity. Today, painting faces huge challenges. The opinions on the "extinction of painting" or the "end of art" indicate the crisis encountered by paintings. However, it cannot be concluded that there will be no new possibility. Whether in the western world or in China, many excellent artists are insisting painting. American artist David Hockney, German artist Markus Lupertz, South African artist William Kentridge and many other famous artists have recently held individual painting exhibitions in China and exchanged opinions with Chinese young artists. Their thoughts and practice proves the possibilities for the development of painting. Of course, the possibility would not be found without unique insight. At the same time, Mr. Wang and many other contemporary excellent painters in China are also working hard to show that there is great potential for the development of Chinese oil painting. Chinese painting They believe that the Chinese oil painting will have a bright future and go to the world if the artists keep pace with the times and care about people's life and nature.