Red Cliffs Nostalgia IV Rowena Loop and Beyond

The remaining point of interest that I set out to include in my Red Cliffs painting is the Rowena Loop.  It is located at a circular lookout atop a ridge somewhere between the towns of Mosier and The Dalles, about an hour's drive east from the city of Portland.  The lookout is a perfect vista for the Gorge on one side, especially in the Spring time when flanked by a carpet of wild flowers; and a stretch of a couple of needle loops on the back side.  It is fun to watch cyclists laboring up in their low gears, and sports cars downshifting at the bends, looking to carve a perfect line up the hill; only to be foiled by the procession of cyclists.  Everybody who comes up this route eventually has to show their face at the Loop lookout, and people who have been watching the drama on top gets to place a face to the unsuspecting  motorists/cyclists.  

Just like the Vista House portion of the painting, I am painting the serpentine road and the circular vista much bigger than they really are.  Here however, drama is aided by the steroid-fed scale of the landmarks.

Brush wash is used to create the faint suggestion of mountain range of beyond, to help frame the enclosure of the river gorge.  The ample void spaces help to create separation, thus depth and also helps to eschew too much details about the distant landscape.  It gives the painting breathing room, as we might say.

A few nonchalant dots with the brush wash on the top side of the brushstrokes give the impression of vegetation growing; without having to give details.

With my 4 main areas of interest all painted in, here is a first look at the flesh and sinew of my Nostalgia piece, being built on the skeleton of the Columbia River Gorge:

Red Cliffs Nostalgia III Multnomah Falls

 

The Multnomah Falls in a little ways east of the Vista House, situated in the Falls area of the Gorge.

If one takes the route of Old Columbia River Highway one would encounter 5 or 6 waterfalls within walking distance to the roadside.  Multnomah Falls is the most famous and has its own dedicated huge parking lot to accommodate the flow of tourists.  I am placing this Fall right next to the shoreline to add drama to the composition and I am retaining the pedestrian bridge which spans across the Falls as a badge of authenticity of my misplaced landmark.  

Darker values are placed on the bordering rock faces of the falls to make the water stand out.  The water shall be represented by the void space.

The shoreline is addressed with a wash of different intensities using side-tip brushstrokes.  Additions of trees helps with the realization that this might be sandspits situated at the base of the hills. 

In Memoriam

 

Red Cliffs Nostalgia II Vista House

After the Stonehenge on the left side of the painting is situated, it is time to build on the rest of the points of interest on my reinvented Columbia River Gorge.

Vista House sits on top of Crown Point in the Gorge and is a popular scenic vantage point to visit.  From there one can see the Gorge and the river some 700 feet below.  If one tries hard enough, one can see the towns of Washougal and Camas to the west on the Washington State side of the river.  The architect of Vista House described it as "a temple to the natural beauty of the Gorge,"  I am borrowing it with certain amount of faithful realism to fit my Red Cliffs invention.

Working with the outline I laid down with light ink, I am building up the landscape.  I am using "dot" chuen to account for vegetation growing on top of the precipitous cliffs, along their crevices and at the bottom of the rock formations.  An occasional writing of lines on top of the dots give an impression of branches.  The rocky shore is done with the "folding ribbon" chuen brushstroke. 

Supplying small doses of light values to give a three-dimensional feel to the landscape:

I realize that I am making the Vista House bigger than it should be, scale wise that is.  I trust this is a subconscious behavior, since I am preoccupied with that structure as the focal point for this segment of the painting.  In actuality I need to make the cliff as the main character.  I suppose the discrepancy is only for me to know since not everybody is familiar with this part of the country.  At the end of the day, this is my construction of the Nostalgia, and the Vista House is a prop in the scenery, albeit an important one, since it helps to show people this is actually the Columbia River Gorge that they're looking at.  I suppose a smaller Vista House will make the cliff more imposing.  Oh well!

Exhibition

I was offered an opportunity to show my works at a gallery recently.  This was going to be a solo exhibition with 28 of my works.  

In the past when I was designing the exhibitions I felt more at ease because the venues were more informal and the personnel involved were all personal friends of mine and they knew my works.  I felt that there was a lot of unspoken communications and still we were on the same page.  I was able to get my ideas across with simple diagrams and everybody understood their roles instinctively.

Inkflow is the app on my iPad that have served me well over the years; for all the exhibitions that I've been involved in.  I could snap a picture of the venue and make free hand written notes on the picture.

I could upload a picture of the venue and plan my layout off the picture.  For that to work, I needed to be familiar with the size and dimension of the proposed pieces, so that I could draw them in place and get an idea of how it could pan out.  

Or I could draw the size of my walls free hand and upload the proposed pieces and shrink them to size and see how they would look on the wall.  Again, having an intimate knowledge of the pieces is vital, since I had to shrink the pictures down free hand, not to exact scale, thus not achieving the exact relative dimensions to the display wall.  I needed to know how many of such pieces could potentially fit on the walls; either by measurement of the pieces, or by eyeballing the measurements.  Nonetheless this was a fast and sure way of checking out an idea.

For this exhibition I had to be a little more structured.  I was working with people I've never met before and they had absolutely no idea of what my pieces were like, other than the thumbnails I provided them with.  I wasn't sure that my haphazard road map would not make too much sense to who I considered strangers basically.  I needed to draw up a schematic.  This reminded me of the days when I was a working pharmacist and I had to set up merchandise shelves on the sales floor.  The exact location of each medication and appliance with their dimensions were all spelled out in no uncertain terms.  Fortunately the schematic was done by the cooperate office and my job simply was to set them up accordingly. 

Thus the schematic I created was to scale.  I used graphing paper for my floor map and cut-out pieces of my paintings.  This was the master plan that everybody involved with the installation would be following.

I had included a few pieces of works that are not framed but in the un-mounted state.  I also included my wet-mounting board with a mounted painting still on it.  I wanted to introduce the audience to the kinds of Xuan paper I used and how a painting comes from being painted to ready for framing.  For these un-framed pieces I was introduced to push pins with magnets.  The magnets hold the paper on the push pins and keep the paintings on the wall without sticking holes in them.  Sweet!  I found my new toy!!

I placed all my zodiac pieces framed in red on the wall across from the entry, such that people can see them through the grated doors even when the gallery is not open.  Also I think the vibrant color helps to draw in a casual audience.

I had all my monochromatic float pieces, (my Sulio Xuan Ban pieces) on one wall, as a suite.

My large pieces on one wall.

The installation went off like clockwork and was finished in no time.  The exhibition was well received, obviously I was elated.

I am very thankful!

Red Cliffs Nostalgia I, The Stonehenge

Now that I have the calligraphy in the bag, I can proceed in earnest to work on my painting.

As I mentioned in my last blog, the verses are from the famous Song Dynasty scholar/official Su Shi (Su Dongpo) when he visited Chibi and was being sentimental while reminiscing the historical events that happened some 800 prior.  The Battle of Chibi ( English translation Battle of the Red Cliffs) was about a naval war between  adversaries and the outcome depended on a change of wind direction.  Which way the wind blew was vital because fire was employed as the tactic in this conflict.  Whoever could predict and take advantage of the change of wind direction became the victor.  The exact location of Chibi is still highly debated, but suffice to say that it is along the Yangtze River.

The Columbia River Gorge in the Pacific Northwest is a designated National Scenic Area and the town of Hood River has the distinct honor of being the Windsurfing Capital of The World.  This section of the gorge compresses the east-west wind and amplifies its magnitude.  On windy days tourist would venture up to the Vista House on top of Crown Point and try to stand up unassisted in the 70 mph winds.  When the east wind blows, we get dry heat funneling through from the east in the summer, and cold frigid winds in the winter.  Westerly wind brings moderation and weather system from the Pacific Ocean.  Present day Gorge is dotted with wind turbines now.

Farther east from the Vista House, we have the famous Falls area, Multnomah Falls being the most well known.  Beyond that near the cities of Mosier and The Dalles lies the serpentine stretch of Historic Columbia Rivery Highway, where cyclists and motorists alike enjoy the challenge of the winding blacktops.  At the end of such switchbacks is the Rowena Loop, which is a circular drive at the Rowena Crest Viewpoint where one can enjoy the Columbia River down below.  Spring wild flowers and birds harnessing the updraft from the cliffs for take-offs make this Viewpoint a popular respite for travelers.  Thirty minutes car ride east across the river from the loops  gets one to the Maryhill Museum, Maryhill Winery and the adjacent Stonehenge replica.

What if I utilize all these vistas and the Columbia River as a backdrop for my painting?  I think it is a perfect setting for reminiscing and it reflects the spirit of the meaning effused by the verses from Su.  I also find a special connection with and relate to the wind in the river gorge.  I can definitely visualize a battle involving the use of fire being carried out here. 

I am making up some rules for me to follow in doing this painting.  One is I shall not hurry. Two is I shall try to present the painting with more classical means of depiction and brushstrokes.  Three is I shall incorporate each of the four vistas mentioned and each vista can be viewed as a painting by itself.

I am starting with a sketch of my main points of interest and the general layout of the proposed painting.  This makes it much easier for me to work on individual sections later.  Somehow I feel more disciplined this way, and more apt to take my time in developing the details.

First come the Stonehenge, occupying the lower left hand corner of the painting.

I am defining the light value first.  I find this helpful when I render my "Chuen" or texturing brushstrokes. 

A more developed painting, with light values and initial texturing.  Notice the classical presentation of foliage.

Continue to develop the left side of the painting:

This is how the left side fits in with the whole painting:

I can square-crop just the left side of the painting, with the calligraphy and make that a painting.  So far I am adhering to my own rules.  

Bane of my existence

FaceTime and WhatsApp are indispensable apps these days, thanks in part to the pandemic.  Regardless, these apps dissolve the physical distance between people and the audio/visual combination makes the virtual visitation experience credible.  Kudos to whoever made it possible for multiple people to connect at the same time. 

My ensemble of siblings is situated on 3 different continents and in 3 different time zones; so we usually meet at a time which would not inconvenience any one of us too much.  During a recent visit, one of my siblings started to recite a verse from some poetry.  That verse was somewhat familiar to the rest of us, yet we couldn't identify the origin readily.  Thus the source of the verse became the conversation for the next half hour.  The sibling who uttered that poem said it was from the collection of the Three Hundred Tang Poems.  

Tang Poems was a subject that each one of us in the group had to study as part of the school curriculum.  That was at least half a century ago. The amazing thing was that we were all able to produce our own copy of the Tang Poems and proudly displayed our book in front of the camera and the conversation quickly turned to a bantering of who owns the most "antique" edition of the publication, as if that really mattered.  Obviously we all considered the collection of Tang Poems a worthy addition to our library.  

Some days later, I was with another clique of overseas friends online and one of them mentioned something about how some of the Chinese hit songs borrowed verses from well known Chinese literature and turned them into part of the lyrics or part of the title.  The topic that day centered around a poetry that dealt with the historic Battle of Red Cliffs.  I won't bore you with the historical facts.  It is easy enough to find it on the internet.  I am not a total stranger to this poetry, since the author was Su Dongpo.  Su was visiting the Red Cliffs, which evoked in him a sentiment of inopportune times and not earning the respect he deserved. 

I decided to do a painting based on Su's writing of  "The Red Cliffs Nostalgia" and I would be putting calligraphy on my painting.  I will be paring down his poetry into a more manageable length, not only to save space, but to save grace.  My grace.

The bane of my existence, and there are two.  I wish I could properly play at least one musical instrument; I wish I have good brush calligraphy.

I had labored over Su Dongpo's calligraphy during my course of learning Chinese Brush.  One that I studied and emulated extensively was his Cold Food Festival writing.  Since it was learning by rote for me, I never internalized the calligraphy.  In other words, I have horrible handwriting, in the absence of the Te.  In order not to "ruin" my painting, I decided to do my calligraphy first.  I won't start my painting process until I deem my calligraphy "presentable".  That is how much I dread my own calligraphy.

I started my practicing routine.

The gist of the pared down writing is:

"The incessant waves urge the river eastward, taking with them all the accomplished people.  Such picturesque landscape, how much history have you witnessed.  Perhaps I am being too sentimental, reminiscing the days gone by.  Life is but a dream; allow me to scatter my wine, ode to the river and the moon."

I finally took a deep breath, threw my hands up and settled on this edition:

I find such resonance in these words, hence the motivation for my new painting.