The canopy of the heavens

The painting above was created by a man of letters who withdrew from society and lived in obscurity. His name is Gong Xian (from 1619 to 1689). In 1644 the foreign clan overthrew the Ming dynasty and the Ching dynasty emerged as the ruling power. Quite many scholar-gentlemen abandoned the conventional lives to go into retreat for the invasion of their motherland . Many officials declined to serve at the Court ,and some persons even killed themselves so as to avoid the inauguration in the Court, while some became Buddhist monks. From Mr.Gong’s living period, we could imagine how much he had suffered in his lifetime.

In his painting we could feel his own salvation in the enormity of nature. The man on the right is so tiny that the implication of the insignificance of human existence is obvious. The occident culture eulogize the utmost charm of the human bodies and hence the lamentation over the deterioration of the outward man is the unavoidable aftermath. However if we ignore the flesh and draw our attention to nature, we will find that the everlasting life force stored in nature seems to be the sources of energy which could animate the existent. Therefore the hermetic art of finding the secret of longevity encapsulated the early period of history; at that time ,quite many people making full-time effort to cultivate their spiritual and religious lives, abiding by the teachings of Taoism. Maybe such attitude towards nature had been diffused in the mind of the scholar-gentlemen in China, then whose landscape paintings were imbued with the taoistic spirits.

Communing with nature is the attribute of our landscape painting, which was named National painting ,for the embodiment of certain theopathy in such special form of arts make it unique. Furthermore the ancient Chinese people were not just concerned with the sphere on which human had been dwelling; they also exerted themselves to communicate with the cosmos through meditations with the belief that it would be the real liberty of human as the soul no longer being trapped in the body. Our spirits travelling in the canopy of heavens is the joyous freedom which is beyond all the pleasure on earth.

Let us hark back to look at the painting; the blank space is not empty. Just the opposite, it seems can generate power to blur the background or make it clear with its movement, for there is dynamic inherent in the void. Leaving blank in a painting is as important as brushing strokes in Chinese painting. The harmonious and serene ambience of the traditional Chinese painting is not just the static image.  The leaving blank is invested with energetic properties which is as the creative power of the wild blue canopy above. 

While holding the brush, the artist’s personal concerns disappeared, and his heart  insulated from the real world. His spirit was high up in the sky, and with the skill of his heart, his brush was generating vivid images with the spontaneous strokes. Therefore every stroke is full of power with animation through spirit consonance. It is the expressive power of the brush comes from. The Supreme Will is in the sky, which manifests itself as visibly in the laws of destiny as in the laws of nature. The traditional Chinese literati connected with the Supreme Will, and didn’t think that the mortal bodies are the most important. Maybe this ideology helped them survived the hardship in life.