My grandfather was a rather solemn guóhuà (國畫) painter, earning his money through sleepless nights working on the tedium-filled detail work of trees and clouds. He had many opportunities to shift his work towards the more popular realm of shui-mo (水墨) where loose, abstract strokes would suffice just the same and leave him with some spare time for once. However, he always insisted that the well-lived life should be filled with intensive labor, concentration and discipline. And so, he always stuck to his Gong-bi (工筆) technique. I remember as a child watching him spend days on a single background tree, or a week on someone’s hand. The lengths he would go to in order to ensure his work’s designation as masterpiece knew no limits. The only impetus of his work was mortality itself, a limit that eventually came calling when I was just a young man in university. As we sorted through his things we were shocked to find that he’d been a secret shui-mo painter all his life, leaving his mark on vases and silk wall scrolls, but keeping them his own little secret, his quiet native affections.
| ARTIST |  |
|
|
Liu Dao 六岛 |
| MEDIA | |
|
|
RGB LED display, acrylic painting, paper collage, teakwood frame |
| EDITION | |
|
|
Unique |
| DATE | |
|
|
Made in island6, Shanghai 2015 |
| SIZE | |
|
|
48(W)×67(H)×5(D) cm |
To see the artwork in motion, visit our website at
http://www.island6.org/NativeAffection.html
