My enrolment in the Vancouver Art Gallery’s ‘Art At Home’ online tutorial for Chinese brush painting in early December was sparked by my curiosity about the Chinese painter, Lui Shou-Kwan, and the seminal, Hong Kong-based New Ink Movement he led in the sixties. The course was generally guided by this influential artist's disciplines and discoveries. I enjoyed the tutorial at the time, but didn’t see myself eventually dedicating a corner of my studio to a back-burner interest in brush painting, let alone tracking down a custom Chinese seal for signing my improvisational ink works in Cantonese!
I guess my inquisitive foray into the mystic writings of fourth century B.C. philosopher, Chuang Tsu at the ripe age of fifteen, combined with the incidental purchase of a Chinese ink stick at a charmingly odd shop called The Wreckage in Ucluelet, BC on Canada’s west coast, gave rise to my earliest kinship with calligraphy and brush art. In decades to come I would dabble somewhat casually in these evocative mediums.
In the introduction to Chuang Tsu’s Inner Chapters, that part of his work that scholars acknowledge were definitely written by him, it is stated, “Chuang Tsu transcended the whang chen, the illusory dust of this world thus anticipating Zen Buddhism and laying the metaphysical foundation for a state of emptiness or ego transcendence.” It is this exact form of transcendence that seems to kick in each time I lift the loaded brush from the ink well. Then! There is no end of depth to the imagery and fantasy that flows as the brush is set to paper even though my compositions at this stage are pretty elemental; bamboo shoots and leaves that float convincingly over impressionistic mountain and waterfall forms derived from wet-on-wet technique for priming the paper.
The purity and ease of the medium reflect an organic stillness where I can find ideas and strength for future paintings, and point poetically to a vision of calm on the far edge of chaos.
Examples in the form of small originals and cards will soon be available at the Jasper Art Gallery.
A portion of my kit for Chinese brush art; The ornamental jars contain cinnabar red ink paste derived from plants. The stamp bearing my signature in Cantonese is pictured in the upper left alongside two examples of my recent brush paintings. A video that goes into some detail on the life of Lui Shou-Kwan is copied below.