Peony

I was all giddy when I left my friend's house.  I left with a few stalks of peony from my friend's garden. 

I didn't do it surreptitiously; I snipped the specimen with my friends knowledge of course.  I was giddy because I finally had the courage to teach people how to paint from a real object.  Modeling unfortunately is not emphasized at all these days; at least I've only had one teacher that championed that need.  The rest of them was just do as I do.

I have griped about the rote learning practice of Chinese brush painting.   I believe it stifles creativity.  It trained many a craftsman, but few artists.   Many of our teachers were taught that way and saw nothing wrong with it.   If one does A and B, you will get C and D.  Our aspiration was to keep doing A and B until the results of C and D were guaranteed.   I bought into that theory too for quite a while because it is very reassuring.   Repetition brings a semblance of success.  It is difficult to eschew from that practice.

To showcase a deviation from such canned styles, I used an example of a peony painting from Qi Baishi.

Not surprisingly it brought on some rather strong comments.  Not everybody is a fan boy of Mr. Qi.
People in general usually don't have an appetite for his rendition of peony.  However he is so famous and all that I am pretty sure this painting would command an astronomical amount of mula these days.  That brings on another discussion.  Is success measured by how much one's painting is worth?  If not, what defines success?

So this is exactly the dialogue I wanted to strike up with my students.  Should we have enough faith to forge our own styles, like Mr. Qi did and not worry about acceptance, or should we play it safe and follow the rote learning tradition.

I gave myself that challenge with the newly acquired peony cuttings.  I decided to at least show the students how peony is traditionally painted, but challenge them to seek their own paths.  I thought it was a good compromise.  After all we do need to start with the basics.

The way I was taught was to load the brush with titanium white and apply color to the tip of the brush only.  As we roll the brush on paper, we apply copious pressure to the belly of the brush to form the flower petals.  The color part of the brush paints the bottom of the petal, while the white belly takes care of the upper part of the petal.  Layering is achieved by the next round of painting in the petals; the red from the brush tip forms a margin against the white area of the previous brushstrokes.  We are in fact constantly managing the negative space (the white part) by painting in the red margins.

My compromise was to teach students how to paint with the prescribed brushstrokes, but we paint not from memory or a fixed scheme, but from observing the real flower.  We touched the leaves, the stalks, the flower petals.  We tried to acquaint ourselves with the subject matter.

I am attaching a picture of the peony we used.

The resulting paintings look traditional and contemporary at the same time.  I definitely feel that these samples  speak with much energy and is a far cry from the run of the mill pieces one would normally see.  Obviously I am not biased.

The best part of it all was that knowledge had been transferred.  I participated in a small way in the saga of keeping Chinese brush painting alive.