Thus Gallant Steed
Thus Gallant Steed
Acrylic and Oil Paint On Canvas
525×300cm
2026
This is the first time BEI Jiaxiang has created a horse series painting using purely black-and-white pigments. Although Silver in the Ashes from the Journey series also presents a black-and-white effect, it was in fact achieved through composite hues.
Silver in the Ash
Oil On Canvas
240×180cm
2024
The entire picture has neither ground nor sky. The horses float in a void, and all that meets the eye is momentum and the rise and fall of black, white, and gray. In the composition, the herd charges diagonally from the right rear toward the left front. Through the accumulation, blending, and dripping of black-and-white pigments, BEI constructs a rich spectrum from deep black to light gray. The nearest horse bodies are anchored in dense black; where the paint accumulates thickly, a heavy forcefulness emerges. Black and white bleed into each other on the canvas, their boundaries dissolving naturally to create an unrepeatable gradation of grays. The horses in the rear gradually fade into light gray, their outlines nearly disappearing. The traces of dripping paint preserve the instantaneous rhythms of the creative act—whether as afterimages of galloping hooves or as trailing shadows dragged by the speed of the charge.
In this work, BEI Jiaxiang seems to be painting simultaneously with oil and ink. The juxtaposition of the two media makes him feel increasingly strongly how ink painting nourishes oil painting. Can one, using only black and white monochrome, still capture the tension of horses and that overwhelming sense of motion? Before painting, he was not certain—nor was he anxious about orchestration. And it is precisely this “let’s try” attitude that transforms the interweaving and dripping of pigment from a tool serving a pre-imagined image into the self-inscription of the creative process. Those galloping horses—their quivering muscles, flying manes, lifted forelegs—emerge by themselves in the natural diffusion and dripping of the black-and-white pigments.
This is an active approach and a bold experiment in which the language of oil painting moves deliberately toward the rhythmic vitality of ink.