Soul and paintings

As I was wrapping up with my sketches of the pig, my thoughts were steered to posing the animal.
How could I make the subject matter interesting and cute, and most of all, auspicious.  My selfish motivation was to have a representational painting to welcome the Year of the Pig, which will happen in about 2 months' time.

Again I was faced with the choice of style for my rendition, whether to paint the pigs Gongbi or Xieyi style.  I just couldn't shake the shackle despite my understanding that this was so unnecessary.

My sketches were obviously line drawings, so I thought I would attempt the Gongbi style, but I knew my calligraphy was very weak and I was afraid to reveal my weaknesses.  The narcissist in me was urging me not to do it.  It was really cumbersome.  Before I could even wet the Xuan I was having trepidations already.    I was very conscious of the fact that since I identified myself as a brush artist, then I had better show my expertise in the brush.  I suppose Chinese brush has so much nuances about the brush tip, the flow and Qi that it has become very intimidating.

I had an opportunity to admire Vincent Van Gogh's works in their original forms and I came away with the impression that his lines showed none of the virtues I looked for in Chinese brush.  His tree branches, outlines of buildings and objects were what I would call wet noodles, totally devoid of the Qi that I was look for; and yet his works are so valued and admired.  Other than his bold, short brush stroke patterns, the quality of his brush was pretty monotonous.  Obviously this is purely my own impression.

Take his famous Sunflower painting for example

and contrast that with a Chinese painting

one could sense a huge difference in where the emphasis was.  Both were representational art, but immensely different in their impressionistic appearance and feel.  The Chinese painting was all about brush strokes and ink tones.  It displayed the intimate relationship amongst the brush, paper and ink.

Let us take a look at a landscape painting  Wheatfield With Crows by Van Gogh,

and compare that with a Chinese landscape painting by Chao Shao-An, a master of Ling-nan School painting

the intricate brush strokes of Chao was in stark contrast with the bold dabs from Van Gogh.

I remember an occasion when a fellow student told my teacher that she was going to paint a Chinese painting in Van Gogh style.  I didn't exactly know what she meant by it or how she was going to do it but my teacher was incensed.  He actually asked that student to not take lessons from him again.
The teacher was irate because he demanded the practice of Ji Ben Gong, the craft of the fundamentals.  Every brush stroke must encompass the calligraphic virtues by showing the tip used, flow and Qi.  His ire was more than a manifestation of tribalism.

Van Gogh was interested in Japanese paintings and he tried his hands in a few.  He painted this Courtesan

and here's a painting of a Dunhuang character from a Chinese painter, Zhang Daqian

again we saw how succinctly different were the way the lines were written.

I was hoping to present the notion that this is not a matter of which is better, or more valid.
How do you compare a Pinot noir to Huangjiu, or Moutai to Vodka.  Before we venture to compare these different alcoholic beverages, we do however need to know what they are and what makes a good Vodka or Moutai.  One would not try to find the hint of tannin from huangjiu.  A vodka bottled in a Chinese vessel does not make a moutai.  But regardless of whether they are brewed with grapes or millet, when these fermented or distilled liquid reaches certain levels of excellence, they shall all be appreciated and consumed.

Having said that, allow me to be the devil's advocate.  Allow me to pose a question.  Van Gogh's love for Asian art notwithstanding, could his Courtesan painting pass for Asian art?  If we found that painting in an attic with no signature to reveal the painter, what would our appraisal be?  Would that be an Asian painting done in Van Gogh style?  Or a western painting trying to emulate the Asian flavor.  What is Chop Suey?  Is that Chinese food?  When I see westerners put soy sauce in their tea I wonder if they were being naive, or was it their preconception that soy sauce goes with everything?  Could it be that they were just thinking outside of the box and was on an intrepid journey to explore tastes?  You might be surprised to learn that there is a soy sauce flavored ice cream!

I suppose the art of painting is not a monolith of just brushstrokes, or color or composition or style.  It is an amalgamation of all the techniques, but most importantly, emotion.  A great painting must have a soul.  A great painting must have a personality, one which moves us.

Soul is defined as an emotional or intellectual energy or intensity, especially as revealed in a work of art or an artistic performance.  The essence or embodiment of a specific quality; that je ne sais quoi.
Thus where I might deem Van Gogh as not possessing the calligraphic brush strokes, nonetheless his works effervesces in other ways and tugs at me just the same.  The standards and parameters are simply different.  A dog does not have plumage and a bird has no fur.  His works possessed a soul.

I suppose all I was doing was trying to convince myself again, repeatedly, to let go of my inhibitions and preconceived hurdles.  I should be worried about the soul and not the shell.

So I just painted whatever came to my mind, and not worry about the style

Incidentally van Gogh is pronouced differently in Amsterdam than from the States.  So should I insist, during the course of my conversation, that people here pronounce van Gogh the way Dutch do, as a gesture of reverence and risk coming off as a pompous orifice between the gluteus maximus ?

Oink Oink Oink

Are we narcissists

As the alder leaves turned fiery red and eventually vanished from the branches, and the silvery frost on my lawn each morning beckoned, the Earth Dog is ready to say Zaijian.  See you in twelve!

I could hear the oink oink from the Earth Pig in the distance, if I try hard enough.  Again I am faced with the proverbial question, what is this pig going to look like.

Artists in general are some of the most dichotomous beings on earth, I think.  We have to be sufficiently opinionated in order to put forth our ideas, yet vulnerable enough to reveal our innermost secrets.  We can't wait to make a statement and yet are ambivalent about the reception.  Of course there is this camp that insists we should have the fortitude to paint whatever we want and in whatever manner, and it is up to the viewer to understand and appreciate our works.  I am sure we can scream and demand and insist, but deep down inside we muse and second guess and long for acceptance. Rejection is a bitter pill to swallow.   Perhaps discontent, and the appetite for vindication, more than anything else, are the real fabric for creativity.   This might sound like an oxymoron but Johnny Carson once said that he is ill at ease at parties.  He would hide behind a curtain if he could.  I believe artists, and people who claim to be artists, are good at fulfilling a role; as Johnny did.  Within the confines of the prescribed role we find courage and confidence.  Outside of the pan, all bets are off.

I believe it is this insecurity that drives us to be control freaks.... sort of; and it is this fear of rejection that plants a deep seed in us, driving us to constantly compose and morph and reveal, always searching.

It is my assertion that creative people are people who can't stand status quo.   Creative people are not satisfied with the real world.   There is the omnipresent urge to alter the perception of what is real.

Why is there a need to paint a sunset ?  Isn't the sunset one of those perfect moments that the Creator forged?  To pose a gliding pelican against the setting yolk, to add a smidgen of crimson to the horizon, or to garnish the sky with lenticular clouds?  Creating "new real" from reality, the painter is not satisfied with the real sunset and creates his/her own.  The artists are suggesting that we look at matters from their point of view, despite the fact that whatever we perceive is still our own, and not that of the artists' myopia.  Yet we artists persevere, trying to change reality as we see it.  Molding our own world, our own reality.

Oh to jog our memory, one might say.  A photo or a painting or a movie clip is nothing more than a suggestion, a stimulus.  Art works are just tools, conduits to call up our own experiences.  We still have to form the image from our head, even while we are looking at a physical object.  Memory is a state of mind.

What are memories?  What are feelings?  Chemicals and electrical impulses in our brains.  When we look at the brain outside of our bodies, it is all but a blob of cold, damp, soft mass and yet we love, hate, empathize, think, create and invent with it.  Yet the topography of our receptor sites and movements of salt ions governed our psyche.  With the advence in AI and VR, could we be far from the future when our brains could be mapped and we could customize our experience?  We could have a virtual rent a movie or go to th  virtual Metropolitan Museum Of Art by tapping our skull with our cell phones!

Of course, when all else fails, there's always the route of chemical augmentation, since the chemical pathway in the brain is well documented.  Either the artist, or the audience may partake in this ritual.  This is the ultimate alteration!  Let's have a rave party.  Drug taking behavior seem prevalent for both performing and visual artists (emphasis on the word seem).  I wonder if there's an association between using chemicals and creativity.  Could this be the magic potion that sublimates what is real, albeit mundane, to something ethereal of our own imagination?  Is this how abstracts work?  Is this how minimalism works?   Berlioz composed the wildly successful Symphonie Fantastique while taking opium drops, albiet for medicinal purpose.  Could that have contributed to the genius of the piece, or was it a product of his manic depressive episodes?

A boutique ice cream business here concocted a turkey ice cream by mixing turkey with ice cream.  Wow that is going outside of the box.  It is now the love of the media and foodies pile on heaps of praises.  Can eccentricity and irrationality become celebrated traits given the right spin? I can only imagine the moment when the first person ever decided to see what fermented milk curd tasted like.   Because this person dared to go where no one has gone before, we are now blessed with Gorgonzola and Roquefort. How desperate must a person be to drink kopi luwak, a coffee brewed from partially digested coffee beans pooped out by felines.  Does exclusivity and being expensive lend credibility?

We are advancing into the field of Artificial Intelligence at a fierce pace.  We make robots that can think and feel and emote; just like ourselves.  Is this the final frontier for our creative minds?  We want to create a copy of ourselves and we want the credit for coding our creations.  Recently an AI generated piece of art was auctioned off at Christie for over $400,000.  Is that a validation of the image, the programmer, or the person who shelled out that huge sum of money.  How about paintings done by animals?  Paintings done by elephants and monkeys have been tauted as artworks.  If we put aside the fact that these are animal productions, do these "art works" harbor any intrinsic values?

Frankly I believe artists are narcissists, to a more or lesser degree.  We go to great lengths to make our views known, no matter how trite or infantile or meaningless. We paint, we perform, we take pictures, sculpt, weave, fire, and in my case, blog. Thank heavens for my soap box.

Please excuse my ranting with my sometimes sacrilegious, often mis-guided, but never nefarious statements.  These are actually questions that I ask of myself, and of others and the answers are as many and as varied as grains of sand at the Sahara Desert.   And just like the dunes in Sahara, they shift with the winds.  I could never get a straight answer.

Such behaviors beg the question, is this narcissism?  Are artists narcissists?

Artists are rewarded by putting their names on a piece of work, having their brand appear in trade magazines, gallery catalogues and museum brochures.  After all this is what the society deem as a proof of success, affirming the talents and efforts of said artists and bestow upon them a decorum of  validations, sometimes tethered to a ridiculously huge sum of moola.  Often times when these "proper" channels are not available, the creative mind still seek identity and glory by graffiti.  This is perhaps the most spontaneous, self-gratifying kind of self-expression.

I chanced upon a synagogue which walls are tagged with graffiti. No I am not talking about railroad cars or grain silos.

 What is unusual about this place is that the synagogue even erected a plywood faux wall and labelled it "Open Wall" to allow ( and perhaps promote? ) this form of expression.  It could be that the establishment saw the need for dialogue and promote its own relevancy by providing such a forum for expression.  Or it could be that by providing a legitimate venue for such behavior of expression that the synagogue would be less of a victim of defaced walls.  If you can't beat them, join them.  Regardless, people still deface the walls.

Is this a creative mind?  Narcissistic behavior?  Or plain insolence?  Is this art?  What is art?  What if these were done by Salvador Dali, would his fame change the perception of graffiti?


Time to step down from my rostrum and get on with my pigs.

First I must study them...... get the nuance of the animal....I can't remember ever painting a pig!

Sketch away!

oink  oink  oink

Quorum gets framed

I've been glancing at my Quorum piece for a while now hoping to receive some vibes as to what kind of alteration I could make to render the painting more interesting.  Sadly my antenna picked up no such signals.  Does that mean my journey with this piece ends right here?

Fortunately no!  I've also been eyeing this frame that I picked up rather inexpensively.  This must be an abandoned order from a custom frame shop, but looks perfectly fine to me.  I've been hoarding it just for an occasion like this.

I have something to tinker with now.  I think I can trim my Quorum piece to fit this frame.  I am going to mount my Xuan onto canvas first.  I really enjoy the texture of the canvas showing through paper.

Normally I would build my canvas frame but I recall a foul experience when the canvas frame twisted after the mounting process.  Since this is a rather large painting, I decided to take the safe route.  I bought a piece of  two-ply wood veneer and tailor fit it to my frame.

Then I applied exterior wood glue to the veneer

My OCD is coming through a tad.  I was being a bit pedantic and presumed that this is the perfect way of assuring even dispersion and good bonding.  To my horror the glue did not spread well at all.

And it is drying fast after being spread thin.  I haphazardly dabbed all I could and turned the veneer over onto a piece of canvas.

I folded up the edges, pinned them in and put weight on the veneer to prevent it from curling as the glue set.

After the glue is thoroughly dried in a couple of days, I trimmed the excess canvas to the edge of the veneer.

The painting was wetted down with water to relax the fibers

The paper was allowed to air dry to the point when it is considered moist.  This is when all the fibers had relaxed and the paper had regained its tensile strength back so it would not tear as easily during the mounting process.  A dilute solution of starch was used, such that the Xuan could float on the starch a bit and I could brush out any creases and air bubbles.  The lowering of the painting onto the canvas is a two person job and demands a steady hand and nerve of steel.  Disaster beckons if the paper does not align with the canvas, especially with a long piece like this one.  Notice the more saturated tone from the wet paper.

I am thrilled to see the added texture imparted by the canvas to this painting

The taut Xuan paper looked like fabric now

The dried surface lost a little of saturation when dried.  This could be restored by applying gel on the painting to reclaim the vividness and the depth of the color.

Finally, my Quorum gets framed (this picture was taken under halogen track lights, thus the warm color)

The Verdict

I've submitted 3 of my black and white renditions to a juried event.

After I tendered my digital images of the works, I started to make frames for them; fully expecting acceptance of my labor of love.  If anybody wants to know what optimism means, go no further.

The work with the two Canada geese spending some quiet time amongst water reed is given the title "Encounter".  The painting was done with Chinese ink on Xuan, subsequently mounted on canvas.
I made a custom frame with poplar and painted it black.

The painting of the single white rose is named "Emote".  The painting was done on Xuan and mounted on a pane of clear plastic.  A custom poplar frame was made with a groove to accommodate the plastic pane.  I was looking for the "float" effect.

I had previously done two pieces of banyan roots and I chose the more complex one to be mounted
the traditional Xuan on Xuan fashion.  I bought a cheap poster frame and trimmed my own mat to display this work.  "Finding My Roots" is the title.

The results are in.

Only one piece is juried in.

"Emote" did not pass muster.

Nor did "Finding My Roots"

So much for optimism.

Presenting: Emote

Now that the painting is finished, it's time to present it properly.  I'm going to facilitate that by using my homegrown Sulio Xuan Ban method.  This is the process where I affix my Xuan onto a piece of clear plastic or acrylic board, such that the finished product presents itself like a float when displayed on a wall.  This method of mounting also lends itself to special lighting effects, which I will delve into at the end of this blog.

Traditional Chinese brush paintings on Xuan is mounted on another backing piece of Xuan, to give it rigidity and proper white balance.  For my process of mounting on clear acrylic board this backing piece is mounted on the back of the board.  I basically trim out a piece of blank Xuan using the same dimensions as the painting, and mark the position on the protective sheathing of the acrylic board.
The fixative is an iron-on silicone sheet made for dry mounting.

the silicone sheet is trimmed to the same exact dimension as the backing Xuan

the backing on the silicone sheet is peeled off after initial ironing

Breaking up trapped air bubbles using a pin or thumb tack.  This is a critical step because these air pockets prevent proper adhesion of the silicone to the acrylic board.  If this is not done properly, then whatever we try to fix on top of the silicone will show air pockets too.

The blank sheet of Xuan is ironed on after mitigating all the bubbles

Once the backing Xuan is in place, I flipped the acrylic board over and repeat the same process with the actual painting on the top side, using the position of the backing as my guide for proper placement of the painting

The ironing process with the painting has to be slow and methodical, taking care to spread and iron out the creases.

When additional air pockets are encountered, break them with a pin and pass the iron over the area again.

I decided to be a little less meticulous with ironing the petals.  I found the little imperfections described their textures rather well.  I thus left minute creases and folds at strategic locations on the leaves and flower petals.

The finished sandwich of painting-acrylic board-backing is ready to be inserted into the custom frame that I built for this painting

The finished product as it hangs on the wall

I am quite partial to the effect of the clear border around the painting itself.  It is much less confining than a traditional frame, and yet looks finished and expensive.  It is a lot of additional work but at the end of the day I'm quite happy with it.

I found a painting of a rose I did some 15 years ago and it is interesting to look at it now and reminisce a little.  I think I have matured.

I mentioned at the beginning that my Sulio Xuan Ban set up lends itself quite nicely to special lighting effects.  Here is an example of placing a light source behind the painting.  I am of course exploiting the translucent property of the Xuan.   This could be placed on an occasional table with a mood light behind it.  I can visualize the drama it could create in a study or a foyer.