The Perfect Hand
My mother’s paintings exude a vibrant life force and wonderful spirit. I often wondered how she so effortlessly finished a painting within a space of 15-20 minutes, especially as she painted from memory; an innate talent I wished I had inherited.
Her creative talent enabled her to paint a range of subjects but she invariably preferred to focus on animals.
However challenging this was, she was determined to capture their essence and energy by visiting zoos, and spending hours observing the behaviour and movement of her favourite subjects.
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Inspiration for misty mountains, rivers, soaring eagles and all other creatures great and small, came from nature documentaries, animal books or simply observing nature in parks, gardens, on walks and farms.
Whatever captivated and moved her, she captured in her mind, thereafter to be reproduced magically on absorbent rice paper, the ink spreading as if it had a will of its own.
She often told me she could only paint when she had an incessant yearning to create something that was bursting to emerge from within. And when her ink brush touched the delicate rice paper to produce form, she entered ‘the zone’, the ground of being.
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Let us explore Chinese paintings further to appreciate the challenges of using this medium.
Chinese painting, despite its simplicity, brings to life the subject with deft and bold brush strokes and often in black ink. Some artists choose to paint in colour, but my mother chose black only. Painting in monochrome was more challenging for her. An accomplished artist would be able achieve at least seven shades or gradations of black; my mother always strived to achieve this, sometimes succeeding and other times not.
To the observer who experiences Chinese painting for the first time, it is important to point out the precise and definitive brush strokes of each painting, where each brush stroke is final and unalterable.
The brush is also held vertically as the artist remains standing to engage with the paper. Because of the highly absorbent nature of the rice paper, the artist must hold a swift and steady hand.
Unlike watercolours, no pencil is used to draw or prepare an outline or features of the subject. The entire painting starts and finishes using one or more brushes only.
After completing each painting, a verse or poem is composed and written in Chinese to convey the emotion and sentiment of the subject. At this critical point, sometimes a beautiful painting can be marred because the Chinese characters may not have turned out right, and so the painting must be discarded.
If everything goes well, the final step is stamping the artist’s signature beneath the verse composition, using red ink paste.
This is done with a stone seal engraved with the Chinese characters of the artist’s name.
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The renowned artist Xu Beihong (1895-1953), who met my mother at the Nanyang Academy in 1940, encouraged her to take up traditional Chinese painting rather than specialise in Western oil painting.
He advised her to learn and practise by "copying” the works of other traditional Chinese painters.
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Below on the left is a painting of Xu's tuxedo cat that she adapted to hone her brush work skills, rendering a close but not exact likeness. Resemblance was important, however my mother was never satisfied with a 'good' painting unless it also encapsulated the essence and life force of her subjects in nature. We can recognise these nuances in her feisty chicks, a dispirited panda, a flock of gregarious storks and even the tiny winged creatures that pollinate our favourite plants and trees.
