Teng Ming-Tun

Teng Ming-Tun (鄧明墩) (1962-) is a Taiwanese artist, born in Taichung City, Taiwan Province. He mainly creates oil paintings, watercolors, and pastels, and is good at unique painting creation concepts and innovative techniques.

Early life and education
Born in Taichung City in 1962, he is a descendant of the 16th generation of Taiwanese ancestor Teng Yanba(鄧彥拔) Tun(敦). He has been fond of painting since he was a child and began to teach himself painting at the age of six. His grandfather, Teng Kung-hsien (鄧恭賢) (name Hui Fu(慧福)), took over as director of Guanshan Temple in Taichung City. The abbot made great efforts to renovate the temple, hired sculptors to make Buddha statues, and painters to paint paintings. Teng Ming-Tun saw the production process with his own eyes and became very interested in it. There were calligraphy tools on the table of his grandfather who studied calligraphy, so he often borrowed them to teach himself. Writing lays a good foundation, starting from the second grade of elementary school, he often participated in sketching and competitions as well. In elementary school in fifth standard he won the first place in the sketching competition in the central part of Taichung Zhongshan Park in grade 1, and has studied harder since then. He studied in Juren Junior High School in Taichung. He studied painting with Li Yuande for three years and sketched in various places in Taichung. He studied in Taichung in high school. In the Art Department of Mingdao Middle School, he learned more art-related skills. He studied bamboo carving and three-dimensional arts and crafts with the bamboo sculptor Chen Chunming.

Career
After completing his military service, he worked in advertising art design and real estate agency planning. In 1992, he began to delve into pure art research and creation, focusing on oil painting. In 1997, he was invited to hold his first solo exhibition at the Fanshi Art Center in Taichung. Later, he continued to create and publish works at his home studio in Dali. In 2006, he established a studio in the southern district of Taichung City, where he created paintings and taught students. He began to record the creative process with videos and published them online for appreciation and research. The studio moved back to Dali, Taichung in 2017.In 2019, he began to create a series of abstract paintings, and in 2021, he began to promote the exhibition of the first chapter of ink and wash cursive paintings.

From 1992 to 2008, he mainly studied landscapes, either realistic or freehand. Influenced by French Impressionism, he was good at expressing light and color. He was deeply influenced by Mo Nei. In addition to depicting landscapes, he also tried to use Impressionist brushwork and colors to express the East. He painted characters such as Guanyin, Zhijingang, Mingwang, Zhongkui in a fusion of Chinese and Western styles. Later, he incorporated Fauvism into semi-abstract paintings, similar to Liao Chi-chun's style. In 1995, he visited Jiufen and was deeply moved. Later, he used Impressionism combined with the style and techniques of Fauvism to complete the work Jiufen Spring 50F.

From 2009 to 2018, he created the Misty series. The paintings are completely completed with a single purple-blue painting. Layers of misty fog are used to express the cold light atmosphere, giving the characters a vague feeling in the visual images. The inner expression of the painting symbolizes history, concepts, doctrines, habits, memories etc., which gradually change and disappear with the passage of time. This series of works has a unique painting style. Famous works include: Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh, ink painter Zhang Daqian, Taiwanese senior painter Li Meishu, Tamsui Guanyin Mountain (King of Kinmen, Li Binghui). He started creating in an abstract style in 2019, and produced a series of three works entitled: Ink and Wash Cursive, One is Everything, and Qi and Molecules.

His creations, based on figurative and impressionistic techniques, combine the moist and transparent nature of ink and the thick and opaque characteristics of dry brushwork of oil painting, presenting different abstract paintings. Using Chinese cursive strokes as elements, he combined dry oil painting and ink wet rendering to create ink cursive abstract paintings, showing new ideas in abstract creation of oil paintings. The launch of this series has opened up new forms of artistic expression for contemporary abstract art in Taiwan. Famous works include Taixu, an ink and cursive oil painting created in 2021, which predicted that the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) international cooperation project would release Sagittarius A at the center of the Milky Way on the evening of May 12, 2022, Taiwan time.

In 2022, he started to create Soul of Mountains and Spirits of Trees, trying to use realistic techniques to depict and record the majestic mountains and forest scenery in Taiwan.

Awards
In 1996, he participated in the IMA International Modern Art Exhibition in Japan and won the Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education Award (Gold Medal).

Exhibitions

 * 1996 IMA International Modern Art Exhibition, Ueno Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan
 * 1997 Fanshi Art Center_Teng MingTun 92-97 Oil Painting Exhibition
 * 2000 New Century Teng Ming-Tun Oil Painting Solo Exhibition, Tainan Yongdu Art Museum
 * 2007 Taipei County Tamsui Art Center, Romantic Art Travel Oil Painting Solo Exhibition
 * 2009 Hands in Hand Art Space Memory Fades_Teng MingTun Works Exhibition
 * 2018 Taipei National Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, Teng Ming-Tun's Original Style Oil Painting Exhibition
 * 2021 Kaohsiung City Cultural Center (ink and cursive), Teng Ming-Tun's oil painting solo exhibition
 * 2021 Kaohsiung Weiwuying National Art and Culture Center_The 4th International Artists Festival Invitational Exhibition
 * 2022 Changhua County Art Museum (ink and cursive), Teng Ming-Tun's oil painting solo exhibition
 * 2024 Tun District Art Center, Teng Ming-Tun Oil Painting Exhibition (ink and cursive)

Publications
2011: Mist & Lost: 2008-2010 Teng Ming-Tun oil painting collection

Charitable activities
He participated in the 921 Earthquake Tzu Chi Great Love Hope Project donation activity, and donated paintings to the 921 Earthquake Taichung to help victims, the Xinhua Charitable Foundation to help the poor, and the Zhou Daguan Foundation to raise funds to help children with cancer.