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Wucius Wong is one of Hong Kong’s greatest living artists, the man who pioneered the ink movement by fusing Western design concepts with ancient Chinese tradition. Clare Morin meets the painter, art critic, designer and art educator in his remarkably humble Aberdeen studio

You began your career during a revolutionary time in the Hong Kong art scene, when many masters were moving here from China.
Hong Kong has always been in a position where we are evolving. Hong Kong as a colonial city and Hong Kong as a SAR of China, Hong Kong will probably totally integrate with China in a couple of decades. The problem with Hong Kong is we’ve never had a proper identity. That puzzled me a lot, as a lot of younger artists are now puzzled. We are Chinese but not totally Chinese. When I was in Hong Kong in the 70s and 80s, at that time I had no identity. I was not able to apply for a Hong Kong passport because I was born in China. I was legally stateless.

Do you see yourself now as a Hong Kong or a Chinese artist?
My generation is slightly different from later generations. I was born before the Second World War and the Japanese invasion. I was inside China during the Second World War. In that way I defined myself as a Chinese during the war. I never forgot that I’m really Chinese.

I would like to ask you about Lui Shou-kwan, founder of The New Ink Painting Movement. He was your teacher?
Yes, I was his earliest student. Lui Shou-kwan was still working for the Yau Ma Tei ferry as an inspector at the pier, and he taught in his spare time. I went to study with him one-on-one in the 1950s. At that time he had the idea of breaking away from the Chinese tradition, yet he also wanted to stick to tradition as he saw it was important for his development. He spoke no English and had never travelled to the West; his experience with the West was through pictures, and books at the British Council Library. He was inspired by British artists in the 19th century such as Turner, John Piper as well as Matisse and Picasso. He copied their works; he redid Turner’s ‘Snow Storm’ [painting] in Chinese ink on paper.

You have since emerged as a leader in the modern ink movement, why are you so drawn to the medium?
To me ink is a profound medium, more profound than drawing and watercolour. Most Western painters use drawing or watercolour, but they will use oils or acrylic for more serious works. In Chinese painting you see a lot of work on silk, paintings on a monumental scale. The brush has been a writing tool for thousands of years. The Chinese invented paper, and earlier they probably used silk or bamboo. Also the Chinese over many centuries have developed a taste for black and white to the exclusion of colour, because the tradition of Chinese painting was carried by the scholars. Before they became painters, they were writers, scholars or calligraphers – that was an essential part of their education. Because of the dynastic cultural class mobility, public examinations encouraged everyone to get more education by reading the classics. The art society was filled with people with Confucian or Taoist or Buddhist backgrounds, and there was an emphasis on the spiritual side of visual art. They were able to communicate in their work feelings of poetry and philosophy, instead of describing the day to day world. They were less interested in painting something realistic. Ink art reflected this, with an emphasis on brush strokes and lines, landscapes which do not really reflect a vision you can find in front of your eyes. They paint from the heart.

See Wucius Wong’s works at New Ink Art: Innovation and Beyond, held at the Hong Kong Museum of Art, until Oct 26.