9 April, 2022 ink painting
The painting Drunken Celestial (泼墨仙人图) was painted by Liang Kai (1150-？）, a Chinese painter lived in Southern Song Dynasty. This painting is stored in the Palace Museum in Taipei now.
Referring to the Zen Buddhism, philosopher Alan W. Watts stated:
For in Taoism and Zen the world is seen as an inseparably interrelated field or continuum, no part of which can actually be separated from the rest or valued above or below the rest. It was in this sense that Hui-neng, the Sixth Patriarch, meant that “fundamentally not one thing exists,” for he realized that things are terms, not entities. They exist in the abstract world of thought, but not in the concrete world of nature. Thus one who actually perceives or feels this to be so nolonger feels that he is an ego, except by definition. He sees that his ego is his persona or social role, a somewhat arbitrary selection of experiences with which he has been taught to identify himself. (Why, for example, do we say "I think" but not "I am beating my heart"?) Having seen this, he continues to play his social role without being taken in by it. He does not precipitately adopt a new role or play the role of having no role at all. He plays it cool. (Watts, 1958, p. 7)
The figures portrayed by Artist Liang Kai ( spelt as Liang-k'ai in the original) is one of Watts's example of "Buddha or awakened man of Chinese Zen" (Watts, 1958, p. 6) who are "ordinary and nothing special" (Watts, 1958, p. 6).
I copied Liang's famous painting for the study of his stroke. The strength was less copied since the lack of practice in Chinese ink painting, but this is the most free and natural painting of my own copies. The feeling when painting is like to be fully concentrated on the brush, as well as allowing the darkness of ink make shades itself, the spread of ink on paper is also decided by the percentage of water in ink, not by anyone.
Reference
1. Watts, A. W. (1958). Beat zen, square zen, and zen. Chicago Review, 12(2), 3-11.
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