Silent Protest

This pond would have a dwarf weeping cherry tree and the Heron would come and stand next to it.  Perhaps the bull frog season has ended, the Heron did not find much to stuff through its long neck.  The creature just turned away from the water and chose to face the Dwarf;  motionless, whilst the wind whipped up its chest feathers, betraying its presence.

 I gave the title "ODD COUPLE" to this painting.

The painting was done in a cold tone.  I tried to do the neck as a single brush stroke but I failed.   It took several passes to get the shape down.  I was hoping to write the neck as a reverse "S".  The feathers were side tipped brush strokes.  I used a rather dry brush to begin with, intended on bringing  out the texture of the feathers but the resulting bird was too harsh.  A moistened brush dabbing over the original strokes took care of that.  The outline of the bird was done broken style.  A continuous smooth line would resemble too much of the Gonbi style and would render this "motionless" heron "dead".

The dwarf weeping cherry on the other hand, was made to look menacing.   The clawing branches and the exposed arthritic roots seem to mock the heron.  There is a tension between the 2 subjects.  The tension is not of an overt hostility, but a muted resolve of c'est la vie, que sera sera, whatever !!  The heron has sought solace from an unlikely source.  The tree can't just get up and walk away.  It is what it is.  How often do we find ourselves in this predicament, an uneasy acceptance of our fate?

I was a participant at a bazaar for arts and crafts, hawking my paintings at a ridiculously low price ( so I was told ).   It was a juried event and I applied as an artist doing Chinese Brush Painting.  This venue labeled me as a Sumi-e artist on the program.   Granted my works do use ink and wash, but I am not a sumi-e artist, especially when I did not label myself  as such.  What is the big deal, you might ask.  Let me put it in this perspective:  A Chinese is an Asian, but not all Asians are Chinese.  What's scary about this ordeal is that the event was sponsored by an art school as a fund raiser.  Imagine how that  school would teach Asian art?

So how did the art form that originated from China ended up being labelled here as sumi-e?   When I was looking for teachers for my Chinese Brush Painting, I came across our local cultural center, whose putative mission was to bridge the cultures, and it offered classes in Spontaneous Chinese Brush and Elaborate Chinese Brush.  Obviously I was confused.  Fortunately I could read Chinese.  What the center meant to advertise was that it offered classes in Xieyi and Gonbi styles of Chinese Brush.  I objected vehemently to this advertising and was told that the non Chinese would not understand Xieyi or Gonbi.   So how do we bridge the east and the west?  How do we bridge any culture if we can't even be honest with ourselves, by calling a spade a spade, instead of saying an implement shaped like a flat scoop with a long handle used for digging.  My suggestion was to stay with the proper nomenclature Gonbi and Xieyi, and put(  Elaborate Chinese Brush ) and (Spontaneous Chinese Brush ) in brackets.  Exposure is everything; we must allow people the opportunity to be familiar with and start using the proper terminology.

Do we translate proper nouns?  Would anyone attempt to translate President Bush other than phonetically?  Likewise we would not allow Chairman Mao to be translated as Chairman Hair! (Mao means hair in Chinese)

When China changed the nomenclature of Peking to Beijing, she asserted to the world that she wants the world to address her as she would address herself.  Peking was probably the  result of some foreigner trying to emulate Chinese pronunciation of Beijing.   At first I was led to believe that this was pidgin English but later I understood pidgin English was something else totally.  Yet during the last Olympics many of the news anchors from  the U.S. ( some of them well known national personalities ) while doing the broadcast in situ , would insist on pronouncing the simple "J" sound in Beijing as a "J" sound in  French "bon jour".  These anchors must have known in their daily contact with the locals and yet they insisted on their assumption.  The word Beijing meant "North" "Capitol".  I am glad that it was not translated literally and only phonetically.   When we insisted on calling Chow Mein by its proper name, people learned to accept it for what it is, just as they accepted crepe and baklava.   Unfortunately us overseas Chinese, especially those of us in the States did not have the spine to insist on calling our fried rice as Chow Farn, thus allowing us to be the butt of the joke for saying  "fly lice".  I, for one, refuse to believe that Chinese could not distinguish "B" and "P" sounds, or that we are deaf to "R" and "L" sounds.  My belief is that we are afraid to "stir up" trouble.  We don't want to make a mountain out of a mole hill.  We were taught to not offend others.  After all people do get the gist of it, so why insist? 

At the bazaar I overheard some Asians telling their western friends to ignore my booth because my "stuff" was "not Chinese" and they were really "not good".  Obviously mine were not museum nor gallery pieces, but neither were any of the other artisans.  Perhaps my pieces did not fit the stereotype?  Did tramping on a fellow Asian elevate us to be more sophisticated and savvy or did it expose our own insecurity?   Would I have felt the same betrayal had the people saying that were not Asians?  For the price I was asking for, my works were real bargains, but that really wasn't the issue.

For my town of half a million souls, the population is innocently naive when it comes to Chinese Brush painting, or at least most of the fellow artists that I had dealt with are.    Words like sumi-e and kanji are used generically sans ill will, just as Google had enjoyed the transformation from a noun to a verb.   People are eager to show that they know something of the eastern culture but stumbled in their quest because they were never told the truth.

So there is this feeling of injustice, insecurity and ambiguity in me.   Should I continue to voice what I perceive as inaccurate or just tolerate with a patronizing smile.  Should I allow myself to be casted as a sumi-e artist doing spontaneous painting on rice paper?   Need I worry that if I insist too strongly then there might not be a role for me to play at all, because the public would have perceived me of having a "bad attitude"; to coin a favorite corporate  Management verbiage.   The fact that local Chinese restaurants that serve Chinese food have few Caucasian clients and the Chop Suey joints here have no Chinese customers speak volume for my concern.   Perhaps what I am serving up on my Xuan-boo is chop suey??

I blame this outburst  on the holidays.  I am told that people are a little moody around this time of the year.  .  I should know, I am a pharmacist.  I must be the Grinch of the X'mas.  Could it be I am just suffering from SAD?  Better up my Prozac dosage, and in the meantime I'll protest in silence.

 Let it be, just let it be, uttering under my breath.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

The 3 Perfections of Chinese Brush Painting

The 3 Perfections ( 3 Absolutes ) of Chinese Brush painting encompasses painting, poetry and calligraphy.  Whereas each of these disciplines is a curriculum by its own virtue, to be able to master all 3 earns the merit of achieving the 3 Perfections or attaining the 3 Absolutes.  The inclusion of these 3 elements gives the term Du Hua ( to read a painting, the preferred Chinese term for approaching a painting) a literal zest.

Not being able to produce good calligraphy is the bane of my existence.  As a kid growing up in Hong Kong, calligraphy was a necessary evil because often it was part of my homework assignment.  To this date I remember burning mid night oil to catch up on completing summer vacation assignments before school starts again in the fall (yes, teachers do assign summer vacation home works), and that usually involved finishing a thread bound booklet of calligraphy.  I was so ashamed of my handwriting that I seldom put my name on anything.  The pursuit of Chines Brush painting submerged me deeper in this turmoil.  The fact that calligraphy is the basis of any brushstrokes kept mocking me.  Unfortunately I had a teacher who told me that calligraphy is not important and oddly enough he never signs any of his paintings either.

When I started off this painting it was just that, a simple painting.  It was an etude one might say.  I was emulating a painting; studying its composition and choice of brushstrokes.   I felt the need to occupy the upper portions of the scene scape.  The thought of incorporating calligraphy came to mind.

In sheer coincidence, I am studying the calligraphy of Su Shi ( pseudonym of Su Dongpo) of the  Song Dynasty.    He was a scholar, poet and calligrapher amongst other things.  He wrote this poem during his exile, lamenting his sad political stature.  I took 4 verses of his poetry and wrote them in his style of calligraphy onto this simple painting.

A loose translation of the poem is

The River kept rising and is flooding my abode,
yet the rain would not stop.
You have kept me out by your 9 gates,
and the cemetery is 10 thousand miles away.

Su Shi was describing his bleak situation.

I found the writing describes my painting well..... an air of solitude, minuscule existence, gloom.

Obviously I am no great painter, certainly not a poet nor a calligrapher.  I did this piece of work purely by the karma of luck, having the ingredients of the 3 Perfections at my disposal.

Note:  in  Chinese culture, the number 9 also euphemistically mean  'a long time' or 'countless'.  Being kept out by 9  gates describes the abandonment of Su Shi by the Emperor.
Chinese culture then demanded a person to visit the ancetors' grave sites during this time of year, as a sign of respect and remembrance.  The fact that he was deposed and exiled meant that his trek to visit the cemetery would be impossible.  Ten thousand miles is not a literal measurement of distance, but rather a symbol of infinity.  Ten thousand miles meant insurmountable obstacle.

PLAYING WITH VISUAL ACUITY

I like to people watch in an exhibition hall.

 People would stand in front of a painting, and start to bow after a few minutes.  They would lean their body forward, closer to the painting.  Those with bifocals or glasses would start to fidget with them, before leaning back to the erect position.  In some instances, the visitors would approach a painting, then distant themselves, and approach again.

What we are doing is not only finding and adjusting our focal point, but also playing with our visual acuity. 

Our vision is unique in the sense that we are always attempting to decode images in the HD mode, or whatever highest resolution our body is equipped with.  However, this peak acuity only applies to our narrow center of vision.  We might have a healthy peripheral vision, but only the center field of our vision enjoys the high resolution.  An example would be if we look across a lake lined with trees, we might only sense them as a curtain of color, especially when we are not focused on them.  But the moment we focus on these distant pixels, we can actually make out the branches, and perhaps an eagle's nest perched on top.  Thus even when we are looking at a misty fog, it might feel foggy or blurry, but our eyes can actually pick up the droplets dancing in the fog (try driving at night in fog)!

When we paint landscape we are told to bestow a lot of information to the near ground, and blur out the rest, to give focus and perspective.   However, it is the behavior of the visitors in an exhibition hall that prompted me to explore the means of adding information to a "blur", to more closely relate to our own acuity characteristics.

In the following example, I was just exploiting the interaction of water and ink and Xuan.  By loading the brush ink heavy just at the tip, with sufficient water in its belly, the ink particles will bleed out into little fissure like streaks.  This can also be accomplished by selectively wetting the outside boundary of the ink stroke with plain water.  The result is a blurred line with structures.

The next example is to take this process a step further.  I actually painted branch tips in the bleed zone.  The result is such that when viewed from a distance (i.e. when our eyes are not focused on it) the image represents slopes shrouded in fog.  Whereas when one gets closer to the image (i.e. when our eyes are focused on it)  then one can begin to see the branches clearly, as our eyes will do, naturally.

By focusing on a particular object ( or subject ), we are effectively placing the image from the periphery of the retina to the fovea, the central part of our retina.  There are a lot more cones ( for color perception ) than rods ( for light perception) in that central region, resulting in improved visual acuity.

Wicker Basket Still Life

I publish my blog on the topic of Chinese Brush painting, but I have to delve into something very personal this time and it has nothing to do with painting.

 Today is my birthday.  What is significant is that I am not going to encounter this ever again.  I was born on November 11.  So regardless of what convention you use, date first, month first, or year first, today is 11-11-11, and I am going to publish this at 11:11.  Pardon my pensiveness.

My personal experience, and those of other novices whom I have dealt with, is that when we see
skinny lines, we automatically dialed down our grip and turned our brush into a point rather than a brush.  The result is the deposition of lines with a boundaries, but possessing no souls.

The concept of transmitting energy through the brush, penetrating the Xuan, past the felt pad, past the desk top is obscure but not mythical.  I suppose this is analogous to martial artists focusing past the pine board and punching through.  My mantra is let our brush make love to the paper, not just tickling the surface.

For my own practice, I chose to do a still life of a wicker basket.  The orderly array of weaves, thrown into this parabolic contour of the container, reminds me of something that the architect Frank Gehry might try to do.

It is important that I still try to write these lines instead of drawing them.  I tried to use a dry brush with varied ink tones to render the 3 dimensional appearance.  The shading effect is achieved  by using the belly of a dry brush.  This is a good way to ruin a brush, but  is a necessary collateral.
This kind of shading speaks of the T'sa technique mentioned in my prior blogs.  It puts down texture and changes light value.  The highlighted areas are void spaces.

This is a wonderful way to practice brush stroke, especially center tip stroke, without getting bored.

Bamboo Leafs Tutorial and Brush Pronation

As I am forced to deal with how to paint bamboo, I am increasing frustrated by my own ineptness  in rendering a good painting, and the difficulty in explaining the mechanics of the brush stroke, especially with regards to the leafs.

As I thumb through the "How To" books of painting bamboo, there are vast examples of how to paint and group the leafs in an ethereal array.   Sadly, very few of them reveal the underlying brush stroke.

I could only hark back to my days of learning bamboo.....center tip, center tip, fast, sharp strokes.
Fine!  I get all that, but how do I add variety to the shape of the leafs??  My  relentless practice just adds more clones  to my collection, neither rhythmic, nor eclectic.  My teacher just kept saying, watch me, do as I do.

So what does pronation ( and supination) has to do with painting bamboo leafs?

Everything !

When we hold our brush vertical with the plumb line, anything added pressure will force the belly of the brush to sit evenly on both sides of the center line.  Thus a rather symmetrical leaf shall appear.
If we hold the brush with the shaft pointing towards our body, then more of the brush belly would be making contact below the center line.  Thus a leaf with a skewed right flank will take shape.  Conversely if hold the brush with the shaft away from our body, the result is a leaf with a skewed left flank.

This discovery prompted me to think in terms of pronation or supination.  Evidence of those is very apparent in how we wear out the heels of our shoes.    A pronated ankle causes the inside edge of the shoe heel to wear out  (most evident for people afflicted with  Knock Knees), and a supinated ankle wears on the outside edge of the heel.  Supposedly one could tell an introvert from an extrovert just by looking at the heels of their shoes.  Anyways, when the palm is twisted towards our body, that is the supinate position, and pronate is when the palm is twisted away from our torso.  Therefore for a right handed person, a supinate  grasp of the brush will result in a bamboo leaf with the fat side to the right of the vein, and a pronated angle of the brush will have a heftier left side.

The significance of pronation and supination  that if we want bamboo leafs  to look lively and natural, we should paint them as clusters rather than individual leafs.  Let me be more succinct, we are going to paint 4 leafs in a cluster.  As we embark on the first leaf (positioned to the extreme left of the cluster), our brush is in a natural supinated position.  As we move over to the next leaves ( to the right ) the angle of the brush is incrementally decreasing towards vertical plumb ( true center tip ) and progressing towards pronation as we drift to the right side of the cluster.  My assertion is that we should try to paint the leaves as a combination of multiple related, continuous strokes, separated only by lifts of the brush, but no hiccups in flow.

The last picture posted above is an example of painting the leafs in groups of 3 or 4 and allowing pronation to occur naturally, thus the body of our brush strokes exhibit different profiles of the leaves.  As the ink soot leaves the brush the strokes become lighter and dryer.  Exploit this trait to lay down  the fainter brush strokes, which help to create depth.
The following is lifted from a "How To" book on painting bamboo leafs and is just a small sample of the hundreds of possibilities of arranging and writing bamboo leafs.  The problem with this rote learning, as I come to realize, is that we are so bound by these prescribed imagery that what we do at best is regurgitation of a lifeless pose.  What these illustrations do not tell us is the assembly of  dance movements that lead to these poses.  If only we can paint the leafs not as individual blades, but as a community, and allow our wrists to go through the various and natural angles of pronation and supination, to imitate the natural growth sequence of the clusters, then our efforts shall be a rewarded with dynamic strokes.

The embedded video shall illustrate my attempt at painting the bamboo leafs pictured above, and some of the points that I have opined.  Granted the leafs do not look that good (just a frustrated painter, but my theory is still sound ) nonetheless the final product is not without emotional salvage.

Pronate, Supinate, do not Regurgitate ! 

My new mantra.

Goose Me

I had painted the Canada Geese a few times before.  Back in 2003, before I started to actively pursue painting, I did a family portrait of Canada Geese using water color.  In fact I used that painting as my litmus test.  That was the permission I gave myself to find teachers who could show me how to paint.

Eight years later, I want to try my luck again at using Canada Geese as my main characters.  I am intrigued by the long black necks of the geese.  Their necks telegraph so much motions and emotions.   Sometimes agitated, sometimes embracing; sometimes curious, sometimes alarmed; yet always interesting.  I thought their necks represent a perfect challenge to depict using Chinese calligraphy strokes.  I would need to find a way to "write" their necks with meaning and strength.  It is with this intent that I embark on my new journey.

First I worked up a general sketch.  I've done a painting on zebras ( see my Horsing Around with Stripes blog) and I liked the general composition of that painting.  I am going to arrange my birds in that array again.

I worked up another model employing colors that reminded me of patina.  I  defined the bodies as if they were commas, dashes and dots.

Well, that looked interesting but somehow it lacked the wow factor.  I know this was just a quick model, but I can't put my fingers on the missing link.

Xieyi

Xieyi literally means to write with meaning or expression.  The Xieyi style in Chinese Brush painting  prides itself in the artist's command of the brush, thus the aptitude  to "write" the painting with a freehand, allowing utmost expressiveness.

The concept of expressiveness in a brush stroke seems rather subjective and ill-defined.  Allow me to draw an example with the human face.  How could the same face portray happiness, ecstasy, mournfulness, sorrow, despair, resolute, anger, frustration, spite, respect, admiration, solemn, disregard, evasiveness, malice, anticipation, frown,  et cetera, et cetera. 

I am told there are close to 100 muscles controlling our facial expressions.   The permutation of these muscles, either as group or individually, is astronomical.  We need not understand fully which muscles are involved, and yet we definitely know when someone is pissed at us.  The same is true with Xieyi paintings.  Wherein the parameter for being "expressive" is obscure, the observer holds the dictum " I  know it when I see it".

Painting is an expression, our way of communicating with an observer and we all want to be understood.    Our innate fear of failure (to communicate)  makes us afraid to let go of whatever we are able to cling onto, somewhat similar to people in abusive relationships.    Our faithfulness to rote learning and emulating often rob us of spontaneity.  We try hard to be perfect and take solace in mimicking the shape rather than the spirit of the brushstrokes, and there is nothing Xieyi about our work.  This is the shackle that I try to be rid of.

The same painting done with expressive brush strokes.

An honest account of a dragonfly.

Same dragonfly done with  expressiveness...... a little more Xieyi.

A good brush stroke is comparable to good bowing on a string instrument.  When I watch Itzhak Perlman or Yo Yo Ma perform and see them using full bows from tip to frog with their eyes closed, I often wonder how much of that is from muscle memory (rote) and how much is from sensing  the
interplay between the string and the horsehair,  and using these full breaths  to complete their musical sentences.   Their cues on the stroke is no longer visual, but tactile.  In calligraphy equivalence, we say a stroke is "delivered".

 Xieyi does not mean an awkward semblance, but a genuine love-making between a brush and paper.