曹明求自幼酷爱画艺，尤钟意于牡丹。后入广州美术学院深造，得名师指导，更精研古代巨匠传统，融会贯通，奠定了坚实的绘画基础。
他能作重彩勾勒，有宋人的缜密；能作泼墨写意，得近代大家的启迪；而色彩的多变又借鉴了西方油画、水彩的经验，故他的创新能得心应手而又有所依凭。
古人称牡丹为“国色天香”。但牡丹入画易艳而不易雅。曹明求的创造性在于他不仅表现了牡丹的庄重富丽，更追求格调的清新，意趣的高雅。根据不同的境界——风中、雨中、雾里、月下，而运用不同的技巧，从而抒写出情感浓郁诗的韵致。
迟轲（广州美术学院美学系系主任、教授、广东省美学学会会长）

From a young age, Mr. Cao Mingqiu was enthralled by painting art, being especially attracted to peonies. Subsequently, he furthered his studies at Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, where he received instructions from accredited painters, intensely studied and thoroughly grasped the traditional techniques of ancient masters, and laid a solid foundation for painting.
He could make a heavy sketch, exhibiting the meticulousness of the Song painters; he could create a splashed ink painting in freehand style, mirroring the inspirations from the contemporary masters; his color diversity pays tribute to the oil and water-color paintings of the West. His creations are unquestionably spontaneous and hardly unfounded.
The ancient Chinese hails peonies as “the beauty of the nation and the scent from Heaven”. However, painting peonies tends to produce more flamboyancy than elegance. Mr. Cao Mingqiu is innovative in that he not only conveys the majestic glamour of peonies but also forges the brisk style in a graceful artistic mood. Contextualizing peonies against the wind, rain, fog and moon respectively, he delivers emotion-laden poetic charm through manipulations of distinct techniques.
Chi Ke, Professor and Director of Aesthetics Department, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts; President of Guangzhou Provincial Aesthetics Society

……曹明求艺术世界里涌动的是现代人的情感、音乐的律动、诗的意境。博大、精深、淡雅、朦胧，一股南北交融、中西合流的春风扑面而来！少了两宋花鸟画的沧桑，没有了明、清的刻板；自由、奔放、清新……像一杯甘甜的美酒，悠长、清香、淡雅又令人回味无穷。
黄耿辛（北京《世纪收藏》杂志主编）

The art world of Mr. Cao Mingqiu is buoying with feelings of modern people, rhythmic motions of music, and artistic conceptions of poems. Being broad, profound, unadorned and implicit, his works greet human eyes like the breeze in the spring, mixing the Southern School with the Northern School, the East with the West. Without the antiquity of the Northern and Southern Song flower and bird paintings, as well as the rigidness of Ming and Qing painters, his paintings are laden with freedom, lack of restraint, and refreshment……, resembling a cup of sweet wine, its taste unending, fragrant, elegant, and leaving with a pleasant finish.?
Huang Gengxin, Editor-in-Chief, Shi Ji Shou Cang Magazine, Beijing.

曹明求的牡丹，是将某一题材画到极致的又一例证。在中国现当代画坛上，齐白石的虾、徐悲鸿的马，都是如此。聆听着曹明求牡丹世界所散发的山水清音，想象牡丹纵向的发芽、长叶、开花、凋谢的生命轨迹，横向的日月山河、风霜的承接和感受，我们的生命无疑会在惊喜中获得升华，在快乐中获得顿悟。我想，这就是曹明求牡丹画的意义和价值所在。
聂雄前（《深圳女报》总编、教授）

Peonies painted by Mr. Cao Mingqiu contribute to the repository of the exemplified works of a given subject, parallel to the shrimps by Qi Baishi and horses by Xu Beihong in the realm of modern and contemporary paintings.? Lending an ear to the serene sound of mountains and rivers from his peony world and imaging the extended life cycle of peonies from sprouting, growing leaves, blossoming to withering and their direct blessings, and interactions with the sun, moon, mountains and rivers, and wind and frost, we will undoubtedly elevate our life in rapture and gain enlightenment from enjoyment. This is, in my view, the intrinsic meaning and the value of Mr. Cao Mingqiu’s peony paintings.
Nie Xiongqian, Editor-in-Chief, Woman, Shenzhen; Professor

首先祝贺曹明求艺术展举行。我曾经看曹明求作品照片的时候，觉得他的作品很有视觉感，很新鲜，今天看画展这种视觉感更强烈了。他的画大气、奔放、热烈。先谈谈我个人的一些感想。一是曹明求先生是一位全才。他的作品有中国画、油画，中国画又有工笔、写意，除跨画种之外，他还跨行业、跨领域，这在中国美术史上是少有的，最重要的是他能将每个种类都处理得相当到位、非常专业。二是他的画大气。他的画充满了阳刚之气，同时还有文气。三是他的作品很精到。不管是中国画、油画，还是艺术陶瓷，每一样都精到，我仔细看过他的画，画的边边角角，从起笔到收笔都很认真，油画在渲染时染了很多层，每一层都精益求精，反映出他严肃的创作态度。四是他的画有很高的文化品位。红、黑、蓝是中国画的三种基本色调，他用现代人的眼光和情趣将这三种颜色的文化内涵发掘了出来。
刘士忠（人民美术出版社编审、著名美术理论家）

First of all, I extend my heartfelt congratulations to Mr. Cao Mingqiu upon his art exhibition. I once browsed the pictures of his paintings, which I thought were truly visually challenging and refreshing. Attending his exhibition today only intensifies the visual impact. His works are magnificent, unrestrained and impassioned. My personal observations are: firstly, Mr. Cao Mingqiu is an all-around painter of every persuasion. His works comprise traditional Chinese painting and oil painting; his traditional Chinese paintings have both the fine detailed style and the freehand style. Apart from spanning painting categories, he paints across all fields and professions, which is rare in the Chinese fine arts history. Most importantly, he could balance different categories in a precise and professional fashion; secondly, his works are magnificent. His paintings are teeming with masculine vigor and cultured demeanor as well; thirdly, his works are incredibly meticulous, which is applicable to each constituent piece ranging from the traditional Chinese painting and the oil painting to the artistic ceramics. Observing his paintings carefully, I found that he even practiced meticulousness over the angles and edges from the start to the finish. He rendered many layers in oil paintings, each of which was consciously perfected, testifying his creation earnestness; fourthly, his paintings are highly cultured in taste. Red, black and blue are three fundamental colors of the traditional Chinese painting. He unearths the cultural codes of those three colors through perspectives and interests of modern people.
Liu Shizhong, Review Editor of People’s Fine Arts Publishing House; Famous Fine Arts Theorist

我惊叹地认识了这位来自中国的现代美术名家曹明求先生，他所绘制的传统与现代的花卉画激发了人们对生命的感受，蕴含着人们美的梦想。
他像似把自已灵魂注入了水墨画中，在其中表述了人生的真谛，我荣幸地看到了人的灵魂在画中荡漾，希望这样的作品绘制成壁画。
迈莲·汉诺（法国画家）

I was amazed to be introduced to Mr. Cao Mingqiu, the premier contemporary fine arts painter from China. The conventional and modern flower paintings by him arouse people’s feelings toward life and bear witness to their beautiful dreams.
He seems to have infused his own soul into his ink-wash paintings to uncover the very truth of life. With great pleasure, I see a human soul undulating in those paintings. I sincerely hope that those works could be painted on walls.
Merlyn Hanno, French Painter

……他的工笔画追求清秀淡雅，着色素净，细化静美；他的写意风格，着意于红与黑、润与焦、圆与方、柔与
刚的对比。一反前人牡丹画那种雍容华贵、妩媚娇滴的传统画风，而注入一种极高尚的思想，赋予牡丹一种新的精
神。
钟增亚（原湖南省画院院长）

His finely detailed style paintings pursue simplicity and elegance, craft color purity, and refine static beauty; his freehand style paintings accentuate the contrast between red and black, smooth and rugged, round and square, and soft and rough. Revolutionizing the conventional style of his predecessors to paint peonies as magnificently glamorous and tenderly dainty, he injects into his paintings a highly dignified thought and endows peonies with a renewed spirit.?
Zhong Zengya, Former Dean of Hunan Provincial Painting Academy

我是第二次看曹明求的画展，这次在中国美术馆展厅内六联通景屏的牡丹给我印象非常深刻，这样画的工笔牡丹画，国内很少有达到这样一个气势的。曹明求画的牡丹格调高，工笔画达到这样的一种气势，这样庄严肃穆，具有里程碑式的意义。
孙克（中国美协中国画艺委会秘书长、著名美术理论家）

This was my second time seeing Mr. Cao Mingqiu’s exhibition. This time, I am deeply impressed with the peonies on six connected screen panels inside the exhibition hall of National Art Museum of China. In China, it is very rare to achieve the same magnificence as?? the freehand style peonies he painted.? Mr. Cao Mingqiu sets a bar for his peony painting style. Being able to render such a majestic and dignified vigor to the finely detailed style paintings is monumentally significant.
Sun Ke, Secretary-in-General of China Painters Committee, China Artists Association; Famous Fine Arts Theorist

这幅画的主要意义不在功夫而在艺术，在万象归一的严谨结构。
结构疲软是形象复杂的大型中国花鸟画的流行病，这幅画以超常规模和超常复杂向这种流行病进行了挑战。作品看似写境，实为造境，画家将丰富的空间层次统一在主景和衬景两大层次之中，两大层次在平面结构上进行了精心的布阵列势，又在平面结构中塑造出复杂的团块结构和空间层次，如果色彩结构和动势结构能提高一个层次，此画乃入极品。
刘骁纯（中国当代著名美术评论家、博士生导师）

The major significance of this work lies not in his hard work, but in his artistry, as well as in its strictly unified structure.
The weakness of structure is an epidemic disease, spreading out among these large-scaled Chinese flower & bird paintings with complicated images nowadays, and this work by Cao challenges the disease with its much bigger size and vast complicity. The work seems to be depicting its artistic conception, but as a matter of fact, composing this conception with rich, spatial layers, that are unified within the two different levels of leading and supporting view, which set up their ranks in an elaborate way on a plane structure, in which they produce a complicated and clustered structure and spatial layers. And if the color structure and dynamic structure could have been raised up to a new level, this work could be a masterpiece indeed.
Dr. Liu Xiaochun, a renowned critic of Chinese contemporary fine arts, Ph.D supervisor

神州涛声（六联通景）
工笔重彩
Sound of Great Waves
in China (a six-part interlinked painting)
Gongbi in deep & bright colors
260cm×528cm

辛未初春，余生一念，欲绘一前无古范，后不知有否来者之巨制工笔牡丹。为集素材，重上洛阳、再赴荷泽写生。数易其稿，其间甘苦自知。
甲戌仲夏，正式勾线施彩，间中不满已成，又三改其稿；日与笔墨为伴；夜拥丹青共眠。食不知味、寐不竟夜；殚精竭虑、物我两忘。
丙子金秋，画已告成，但见几百花头、数千枝叶，云集一纸、无一雷同。其势恢宏壮阔、其度旷远幽深，真巨制也！
屈指算来，起稿成画，寒来暑往，两度春秋已过。揽镜自照，两鬓初染霜雪，开门出见亲友，相视默默无语。丹青何能？让我钟情于斯！
曹明求《神州涛声》题记

Early in the spring of 1991, I came up with an idea on a new theme, the peony, for a huge-size gongbi painting (a traditional Chinese genre of realistic painting characterized by its delicate brushwork and close attention to detail), which, to my mind, should be something unprecedented in all of our history, and might have nothing else to follow it in the future. To collect source materials, I went back to both Luoyang City in Henan Province and Heze City in Shandong Province, both places being famous for growing the best of peonies, did a lot of sketches there, and eventually translated them into my peony paintings after experiencing plenty of difficulties and pleasure, which could be shared by no one else but myself.
In the summer of 1994, I started to draw outlines, use colors and set up a good sense of spacing after three large-scale changes, during which, I spent all my days and nights painting with my brushes and ink in order to do a good job, with no appetite for food and no sleep for a whole night, exhausting my energy and racking my brain while forgetting myself and the outside world.
In the golden autumn of 1996, I finally completed this painting of mine, which carried some hundreds of peonies and several thousands of leaves on this single piece of work, with no single object looking the same with the others. What is more, its grandiose momentum and profound perspectives backed up the work as a real-sense huge painting!
Counting on my fingers, I realized that two years had passed since I got started; looking at myself in mirror, I saw my hair graying at the temples; going out to meet my relatives and friends, we looked at each other silently but couldn't help wondering how this very art of Chinese painting had grabbed my love so hard!
Painter's Postscript to His Sound of Great Waves in China

……曹明求把牡丹作为主题，从红·黑·蓝三个方面表现，黑是在水墨的技法上有探索，画的大牡丹，花、叶子都有气势，比较厚重；他具有开拓的心理，将工笔画、水墨写意画结合后，发展到油彩画，使作品有抽象和半抽象意味，根据牡丹花的发展来处理色彩变化，这是一个很好的探索。
孙克（中国美协中国画艺术委员会秘书长、著名美术理论家）

Mr. Cao Mingqiu adopts peonies as a subject and represents them in three hues, i.e., red, black and blue. Employing black marks his forays into techniques of ink-wash paintings. The big peonies painted by him manifest clout in both flowers and leaves, which appear rather sophisticated; he is innovation-savy. Incorporating the fine detailed style of painting with the freehand style ink-wash painting, he extends it to oil painting, rendering his works abstract and quasi-abstract, and processes the color changes through evolution of a peony flower. This is an incredible quest.
Sun Ke, Secretary-in-General of China Painters Committee, China Artists Association; Famous Fine Arts Theorist

……曹明求的作品，既有纯正严谨的工笔，也有放笔直抒的写意；时而用与墨兼容的丙稀，时而又用粘稠的油彩。他悠游于不同的材料之间，漫步在不同画种的边缘地带，他是在“此地”与“彼地”的“临界点”上展开他的艺术主题，在墨彩与油彩之间寻找他心灵的归宿。
贾方舟（著名美术评论家、策展人）

Mr. Cao Mingqiu’s works consist of both the conventionally meticulous fine-detailed style and the boldly unrestrained freehand style; he applies either the propylene soluble in ink or the glutinous oil paint. With great ease, he charts his course using different materials and wanders on the borders of different painting categories. As a matter of fact, he pursues his artistic theme on the “boundary” of “here” and “there” and searches for his abode of soul between ink and oil paints.
Jia Fangzhou, Famous Fine Arts Theorist; Exhibition Planner

……《大花系列》使曹明求现代构成的才能和对绘画中音乐性的敏感得到了更加充分、更加自由的释放。它内含悲情，但总基调却是生命的欢乐和胜利交响乐。
刘骁纯（中国当代著名美术评论家、中国艺术研究院美术研究所研究员、博士生导师）

The “Big Flower Series” has enabled Cao Mingqiu to release his capability to pursue a modernist structure, and his sensitivity to the musicality in his paintings with more freedom, and to a larger extent. Carrying a bit of melancholy, the series as a whole keeps up its general keynote, which is obviously composed of a Jubilate of life and a symphony of victory.
Dr. Liu Xiaochun, a renowned critic of Chinese contemporary fine arts, researcher of  Institute of Fine Arts, Academy of Arts of China , Ph.D supervisor

……他在现实中遇到了理想中的美好东西，由此激发不可阻挡的激情，向自然学习。他赋予牡丹更多的意义，有文化的意义、诗的意义、哲学的意义。牡丹在他心中形成了心象，他的作品画出了对牡丹的认识、感受和哲学意义上的牡丹。
王宏建（中央美术学院教授、著名美术理论家、博士生导师）

He identifies himself in reality with the aspired beautiful things, which fuels his undaunted passion to learn from Nature. He assigns broader meanings to peonies culturally, poetically and philosophically. Peonies make up a memory paradigm in his mind. And his works paint his views and perceptions toward peonies in a philosophical sense.
Wang Hongjian, Professor and PhD advisor of China Central Academy of Fine Arts; Famous Fine Arts Theorist

……曹明求在牡丹花的创作上有继承，更有创造。他以古人“以兴比人”，“夺造化而移精神遐想”为起点，但他的“比兴”，显然具有浓厚的现代文化色彩，通过牡丹的生发枯荣，展开现代人对宇宙的联想和对生命的思考。他以花朵为生命的意象，在富有戏剧性的演绎中，不同生命阶段和处境及至生命的高潮都表现为惊心动魄的生命片段。……就像天空中的彩霞，璀璨地横空而过，让黯淡的尘世获得片刻的华丽光彩。它们的色彩如流水，如火苗，变动升腾，在生长动态之中带来永不消逝的希望和兴奋。……他以风景画家对待云霞明灭的长空、激浪澎湃的大海、幽深邃密的山林那样对待那些花朵，赋予它们激情的畅想和渴念，静观的澄澈和觉悟。以薄涂或厚积的色彩，构成坚实的肌理和悠远的空间，传达情调的高亢和克制、冲撞和平衡、激越和敛息之间的翻转变动；形成或写实、或抽象；或象征、或神秘；或简洁、或明朗、或幽暗的意向。他从牡丹花想到浩渺的宇宙和深邃的人心，抓取永恒的瞬息。
水天中（中国当代著名美术史论家、中国艺术研究院美术研究所研究员、中国美术家协会理论委员会副主任）

Mr. Cao Mingqiu is a successor to and an innovator of conventions in creation of peony paintings. He upholds the principle of the ancient painters to “juxtapose things and humans in analogy” and “grasp the essence of an object to fuel the spiritual imagination”. Yet his analogy apparently shows the modern cultural dimension. Through the birth, sprouting, blossoming and withering of a peony flower, he sets out to communicate the modern people’s aspiration towards the universe and reflection upon life. Under his paintbrush, flowers are analogous to life. With dramatized interpretations, different stages and experiences as well as prime times of life are revealed as the heart-arresting snapshots. They are like the bright rainbow glazing across the sky, blessing the gloomy earthly world with moments of brilliant hues. Their colors resemble the running water and the burning flame, spiraling up in volatile motions, to supply inexhaustible hope and enthusiasm in the dynamic process of growth. He views the flowers the way the landscape painters feel the weathered sky, the undulant sea, and the deep and shady woods, animating them with ardent imagination and yearning and meditated knowledge and enlightenment. By thinly employed or thickly deposited colors, he forges the solid textures and the remote space to convey the changes of emotions alternating between fervency and restraint, provocation and balance, boldness and conservativeness and eventually build imageries realistic and abstract, symbolic and mysterious, and succinct, explicit or implied. He sees in peonies the profound universe and the unfathomable human heart, with an attempt to seize the moments in eternity.???
Shui Tianzhong, Famous Contemporary Chinese Fine Arts Theorist; Researcher of Department of Fine Arts in Chinese National Academy of Arts; Vice Director of Theory Committee, China Artists Association

红色系列—家园（三联画局部）
布面油画
The Red Series: Homeland
(a three-part interlinked painting detail)
Oil on canvas
200cm×360cm

致明求兄
——贺《多元体系与当代中国画研究》出版
把酒三呼大手笔 细读更赞一丰碑
志存高远行如铁 揽月摘星信可期
张九桓 (中华人民共和国驻泰王国特命全权大使)

To My Friend Mingqiu
-----In Honor of Publishing of Studies of Multi-Element System and Contemporary Chinese Painting
While taking a cup of wine, I hail it a tremendous accomplishment three times,
Upon reading it carefully, I further deem it monumental,
With great ambition and relentless actions,
I believe it won’t be long before I hear good news from my dear friend.
Zhang Jiuhuan, Ambassador, Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Royal Thai

曹明求君是一位多才多艺的画家，他的绘画创作涉及面很广，有国画、油画，写实、写意……两年多前，他在中国美术馆举办的个展向人们展示的是中国画作品《大花系列》，洋洋洒洒上百幅，或用工整笔法，或用兼工兼写法，更多地用大写意法，呈现牡丹花的各种形态和情致，以抒发他内心的感情。他的绘画艺术富有才情，个性风格鲜明，且有强
烈的现代意识。
他钟情于绘画，但他不愿做一个“只是一般意义上的画家”，他心目中的当代艺术家的首要条件“是应该具备自己创作的艺术观”。看来，曹明求作画有明确的思想指导，甚至于他选用的绘画体裁，采用的技法、技巧，都服务于他对绘画问题的思考。……
……我在阅读曹明求这部书稿的过程中，深深体会到作者认真、执着的研究精神，他用三年时间写作，在此过程中八易其稿。作者的知识储备是充足的，修养是丰富的，视野是开阔的，思维是敏捷的，观察和分析问题是辩证的。他提出的问题有现实意义，他对问题的分析与解答，对人们的认识与思考有所启发，对问题的进一步深入研究会起推动作用。我想，这就足以说明这部书稿的价值了。……
——摘自曹明求著《多元体系与当代中国画研究》序言
邵大箴（中央美术学院教授、博士生导师、中国美术家协会理论委员会主任）

Mr. Cao Mingqiu is a versatile painter. His painting creations contain a great breadth of categories, including traditional Chinese painting, oil painting, realistic painting, and freehand style painting…Over two years ago, his personal exhibition at National Art Museum of China displayed to visitors his traditional Chinese paintings Big Flower Series. Hundreds of his voluminous paintings employed the meticulous style or the freehand style, which is typically the great freehand style, to manifest peonies’ varied shapes and sentiments and consequently express his inner emotions. His painting art is imbued with enormous talent, distinctive personal style, and vigorous modern spirit.
Intrigued by painting, he is never satisfied with “being a painter of a general sense”. In his view, a contemporary artist is preconditioned upon “essentially having an artistic vision of self creation”. It seems that Mr. Cao Mingqiu has aligned his painting with explicit thinking. Even the subject, technique and skill he selected upon painting all give way to his meditation over painting issues.
While reading the manuscript by Mr. Cao Mingqiu, I deeply perceived the conscientious and unyielding research spirit of the author. He spent three years writing the manuscript and made revisions eight times. The author demonstrates erudite knowledge, profound cultivation, unbridled vision, sharp thinking, and dialectic problem-survey and-analysis approach. The questions put forward by him have a realistic dimension. His analysis of and answer to those problems provoke readers’ views and thoughts and spur further delving into the problems. This could, in my view, testify the inherent value of the manuscript.
Quoted from Preface to Studies of Multi-Element System and Contemporary Chinese Painting by Cao Mingqiu
Shao Dazhen, Professor and PhD Advisor of Central Academy of Fine Arts; Director of Theory Committee, China Artists Association