Huang was born in Kaohsiung in 1944. His family was poor, but his father was a passionate gardener. The family’s beautifully tended garden and Huang’s grandmother’s skillfully woven bamboo sunhats nurtured Kuang-nan’s aesthetic sensibilities. When his future wife first visited his family home, even she exclaimed with surprise: “Isn’t your family poor? How come you have such a beautiful garden?”
As the eldest son, Kuang-nan from a young age helped out with farm work and domestic chores such as washing clothes, cooking, and minding his younger siblings. As a child of a poor family, he could only study in the odd moments away from his family duties.
His childhood, full of sweaty labor as it was, helped to refine his observational powers and his appreciation for the beauty and vitality of nature. From the fields, he could see such peaks as Mt. Bagua, Mt. Banping and Mt. Dawu, and the green ridges layered one behind another. “The beautiful scene made me want to capture that moving feeling in a painting,” Huang says.
Coming from a poor family, Huang couldn’t afford paper and brushes, so he would draw the mountain scenery using sand for paper and sticks for brushes. He thus had a lot of practice before he actually took up painting.
In junior high school Chiang Ching-jung, a teacher and mentor who changed the course of Huang’s life, saw his artistic potential. The day of March 18, 1960 is one that Huang remembers as if it were yesterday. Chiang brought Huang to his house to paint and then entered one of Huang’s paintings in a Pingtung County competition. It came in second, and for Huang the award was extremely validating.
The Meanders of Gaoping Creek 70 × 70 cm, 2015