李爽是个有故事的女人，她曾经在中国自由主义思潮初萌时期就以艺术的形式为自由振臂一呼，她曾在那个封闭严肃的年代里演绎过轰轰烈烈的爱情故事。如今，她带着她的作品又回到中国，展现给观者的却是一个淡然而恬适的逍遥世界。
这是李爽经过百转千回最终越来越接近的精神世界。在这个世界里，总有一张神态安详的脸庞，双眉温润，双目微睁，嘴角含笑，亦悲亦喜，与世无争。带有东方佛教色彩的人物肖像与带有西方基督教特点的构图和谐地融合在李爽的画面中，这不是单纯对宗教或神学的赞美，而是通过泛宗教的视角重新发现人类精神世界的普世价值——单纯，宁静，平和，宽容。在这一点上，李爽回溯了人类美术历史中关于肖像画的本质，一个肖像并不单纯指向一个具体的人，而在于揭示人物发散出来的情绪和精神，凭借情绪和精神上的感染力与观者完成对话。李爽的作品完美地将观者带入了一个宁静平和的世界，每个人的情绪和精神都被包裹在这种平和的力量中，祥和的氛围使每个人都能将自己的情绪投射在画作之中。而这也正是李爽作品的独特之处，如同她创作的肖像有着东方佛教造像的神韵一样，李爽的创作情绪也与古代绘制佛像的画匠们如出一辙——满怀虔诚，把自己全身心地交付给作品，最终与作品水乳交融—— “我发现我创作的时刻占据了我的所有思绪，包括身体，我的内心流动着兴衰交换的奇异生命力，把我和时间、物质情感粘合在一起。”
正是这样的水乳交融，使得作品散发出的情绪与李爽的内心世界一直如影随形。从最初对种种束缚的强烈挣扎反抗，到宽容地看待世界，如画中人那样平和恬淡地体会这个世界；从对生活充满迷惘，到参透人生真谛，如画中人那样与世界乃至宇宙共同呼吸。最终让自己的生命之光破茧而出，达到逍遥之境。如同那个美丽的故事一样，庄子也罢，蝴蝶也罢，管它是梦是真，且由它去，只尽情的享受生命就好。
透过这些深刻描绘的作品，李爽不仅回溯了肖像画的本质，更是让自己的作品无限接近了艺术之所以成为艺术的本质：艺术是人的一种生命方式，艺术的本质服从于人的本质。人的本质不是历史决定的，而是人性决定的。作品之所以伟大是因为作品的情绪能够穿越时代而不朽，艺术家之所以伟大是因为艺术家的精神能够穿越时代而不朽。李爽的作品正是因为所呈现的人性光芒终于跨越种种文化差异，跨越时代直接进入观者的内心世界。
文/ 李颖
2010年2月
Nothing more, nothing less than the serene freedom of naturalness
Li Shuang is a woman who has a story. At the beginning of the libertarian wave in China her art was a rallying cry for freedom; and she had, when Chinese society was strictly closed, a sensational love story. Today, she is coming back to China with her works to show the public a free and serene world.
This is the spiritual world to which Li Shuang, after a thousand detours, is getting closer and closer. In that world, there is always a serene face, with eyebrows full of kindness, half-opened eyes, and a smile at the corner of the mouth, half happy and half sad, aloof. Those faces, under Li Shuang’s brush, have a Buddhist and a Christian air at the same time, but they are not merely praising religion or theology: they are a new discovery of ordinary world values like purity, serenity, kindness and tolerance. Li Shuang thus goes back to the traditional quality of portrait in art history, which is not only the representation of a particular person, but also consists in revealing the emotions and feelings of the subject and thereby allows, through a kind of contagion, a dialogue with the viewer. Li Shuang’s works perfectly take the viewer to a serene world which wraps his feelings and spirit, and allows him to project them onto the paintings that he’s watching. This is a special aspect of Li Shuang’s work，by creating portraits of oriental and romantic Buddhist charm, the emotion that flows from her works is similar to that which came out of the Buddha representations that craftsmen of yore used to make: pious works full of devotion, to which the artists devoted themselves body and soul, and with which they were in complete harmony. “I realized that when I’m painting, I am totally engrossed, body and soul, and that in my heart bursts of an extraordinary life strength rise and fall, which merges me in total harmony with time and matter.”
It is this very harmony that causes the emotion that emanates from Li Shuang’s paintings to take the form of her inner world. From her early fierce resistance to anything that fettered her to the tolerant view of the world that one can feel from her paintings today; from a life full of confusion to the deep understanding of human life, the subjects of her paintings all breathe the same air and live in the same world, the same universe. Eventually, the ray of light of her own life appears, and we can reach the realm of carefree life, where the mind is free. It is as in that beautiful story: whether it is Zhuang Zi or the butterfly, whether the dream is true or not does not matter; what matters is life.
Through these profound works, Li Shuang not only goes back to the quality of portrait, she reaches to the quality that make art what it is. Art is a way of life, and the quality of art depends on the personal quality of the artist; and that quality is not determined by history, but by the character of the person. What makes a work great is its capacity to move viewers beyond generations; what makes an artist great is that his or her mind transcends time. It is because Li Shuang’s works, through their human glow, transcend all kinds of cultural differences that she reaches, beyond generations, the inner world of the viewer.
Amy Ying Li
22 February, 2010