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| Share -- Hermit, Yafei Li, ca.2017 |
"Hermit: If you don't have peace within you, you won't find it here."
Tony wrote this to me after the conversation on last Tuesday night. Such beautiful words, on a blank paper, absolutely is one of treasures in my whole life.
After the studies VEIL and TIDE, in which I did two paintings of porcelains. Seems like I was on the wrong direction. I asked Tony where I am going. So we talked a lot on that night, Daqian Zhang, Helen Frankenthaler, Xiaodong Liu ... Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits (Bill Porter) ... Treasures of Asia: Chinese Painting (James Cahill) ... finally Tao Chi ...
I didn't realize Tao Chi during the conversation because the name is in Cantonese. In Mandarin, it is Shitao. Actually, I went to an exhibition in Beijing this summer, Painting and Calligraphic Works by the Four Monk Artists from the Permanent Collection of the Palace Museum (link as attached below). It is the first time to see so many paintings by them four together. Tony told me Tao Chi's work is highly appreciated in the west. But I really like Hongren and Bada Shanren.
On that night, I didn't fully understand when Tony said that you should let your painting free. But when I draw this painting for SHARE, I start to understand. Put them side by side. Those porcelains are too concrete and solid, and I need to pay attention to each bush, like cartoon. SHARE, mountains are free, trees are free. Even though lines of the hermit and fog are solid, feeling is free. Perhaps that is a touch of the curtain in ancient Chinese paintings.
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