The Consciousness of Painting

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This morning, chatting with a second-year painter in front of her drawings, with our back facing her two paintings, on a sleepy, coffee-less Tuesday at 8 a.m., our conversation drifted to the “fear and love” of painting. Our chat reminded me how much I considered myself a “painter” in my second year of the MFA at Ohio State University, and how scared I was of my own painting…

I attached a piece of writing I did 12 years ago, as a grad student in 2014. I was trying to reflect on why this form of art intimidated me, and to toughen myself up. It was a baby Dan trying to be brave and philosophical about the challenge I was facing, and about eliminating self-doubt—not unlike what is happening on the ground here. I was just as vulnerable as you guys (saying to my MFAs). Devote yourself to that very question that is uniquely yours; it will all work out.

As for myself, I often return to John Berger’s line: “Drawing is discovery.” I would add that painting is also a discovery, and a rediscovery, of the paint itself.

The Consciousness of Painting

- From 2014/05/06, end-of-semester statement as a second-year MFA student at OSU

During a recent studio visit, I was asked why I paint and why my drawings do not exist in their own right but function rather as studies for paintings. At that moment, I felt anxious to respond immediately to these questions, as if, by failing to defend myself, I could somehow lose the right to paint. That, of course, was an irrational reaction to have. Clearly, the activity of painting is not authorized by anyone other than the artist herself, and even if she fails to realize this fact, the visitor's intention demonstrably has more to do with assessing the value of drawing rather than expressing disapproval of painting. In an effort to understand my reaction, I started to think about how my drawings relate to my paintings, and why, after all, it is necessary to paint.

Drawing is beloved for the fluency that characterizes the process. Every day my surroundings offer new inspiration. In his chair I see Adam drop his head with exhaustion, a wobbly plant sets in a corner of the Fine Arts Library, 17th street outside my studio window once again empty on a Saturday afternoon,... these momentary scenes leave me with impressions and the compulsion to again give them form. Drawing allows me to do so. With material and tools standing by, and white watercolor paper cleanly stacked, I have my invitation to begin a visual journey.

Then there is painting, requiring a heavy investment of time, energy, and material to produce a workable surface. In advance of the action, I must decide on the subject, size, medium, canvas, and ground material, then there is building, stretching, stapling, grounding, sanding, more grounding, and more sanding... After all these procedures are carried out, there is at last realized a gorgeous, smooth surface before me, glowing with a terrible and terrifying perfection. However, the surface does not belong to me. The achingly pure white ground seems to demand occupation by an image of equal purity, even perfection, while my ability to deliver one seems impossible. Preparation to take decisive action is confounded by fear and hesitation. Though I feel the problem lies in having allowed too much deliberate, I am unable to stop the budding self- awareness as if born of the prepared canvas itself, which appears more and more complete the longer I withhold the application of paint. The white void of the canvas may exist indefinitely as such in a state awaiting application.

There is a redundancy of thought here impeding my ability to carry out the creative process as efficiently as I would like, and I suspect that by simply converting from painting to drawing, I may be liberated from such a frustrating pattern. Joan Mitchell, Cy Twombly, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, have all done just that and their work seems to enjoy both the fluency of drawing combined with the authoritative appearance of painting.

But what if the issue extends beyond the formal process, beyond the relative validity of the work itself? The demands that a painting makes of me perhaps serve a function. Painting comes with the consequence of certain psychological burdens, but doesn't it simultaneously provide an opportunity to triumph over my own doubt? What if I bring myself in front to that canvas again? Acknowledging this time that my image is always going to be imperfect, knowing that there is always a danger of over- thinking, knowing there is a necessity for self-awareness, indecision and struggle. The infallible painting surface serves me as a test stone for the confidence and authority that I assign to my idea. There is no danger in drawing. Facing fear and doubt is only possible through the painting process, and in taking ownership of this practice, I am trying to confidently admit to my own imperfection. In this way, engaging the canvas, knowing full well the likelihood of repeated failure, becomes an external means to my internal examination.

I must have the consciousness of painting, it is the means by which I seek to free myself from consciousness itself.

The list goes on and the list goes down, every wall is a door

Bow and arrow, fog, Buddha's hand, citrus fruit, airplane, words, a mother and son, sign, fruits on a plate, landscape stone, scholar rock, brushstroke, pine tree, water, blank space, ladders, mountain top, literati figure, flags, rabbits, horses, symbol, fountain, picture plan, clouds, doors, indoor plants, animal specimens, basement, blue eyes, birds, wig, body parts (hands, feet, trunk), swimming pool, AK-47, red cherry, green banana leaves, iris, folding screen...war

"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are just waiting to see us in action, just this once, with beauty and courage. Maybe everything that scares us is, in its deepest essence, helpless and wanting something we can love." - Rainer Maria Rilke'

And I have to insist that beauty and courage are precisely the same as pain and struggle (every wall is a door, says the Chinese philosopher Wang Yangming) and that at the point of splitting faith, we will always have an agency in determining, to love or not to love.

every wall is a door

Hats and Unicycle

We were saying to each other that it is hard to find continuity nowadays - teaching, studio work, attending to family, and admin tasks - while global news comes in left and right, like a darkening cloud above our heads. I try not to look up, knowing it is there.

We were saying that we switch between many hats, and recently, the hats have been stacked on top of each other. "Except that right now, I think my hats are all falling off!" you said.

"Mine are still intact - barely, but I am also riding a unicycle!"

Sometimes I want to say to my student:

We will never be 100% the kind of teacher you expect us to be. Similarly, there is no 'the perfect' student. Each of us possesses a certain percentage of the qualities of both a teacher and a student. For the right person, those qualities can switch at any time.

We cherish the part of the 'teacher' or 'student' that we see and accept the rest of that person. Knowing that acceptance doesn't have to be translated as submission.

我们永远不会百分之百成为你期望我们成为的那种老师。同样地，也没有所谓的“完美学生”。我们每个人都具备某种程度的老师和学生的品质。对于有的人来说，这些品质可以随时切换.

我们看到，珍视那个“老师”或“学生”的部分，并接受那个人的其余部分。同时明白这种接受不必非要理解为屈服。

Image Sea

When I start my art-making process, I imagine myself swimming in a sea of images. Of course, which part of the sea the artist swims in depends on her respective life experience, memory, and history. I am well aware of what kind of pictures saturate my area of the sea; it is filled with the still-images of my everyday surroundings. I see my husband Adam in his chair, dropping his head with exhaustion after a hot day at work, and a wobbly plant (losing its leaves) sits on the kitchen window, the pecan tree waving; these simple moments compel me to record them and begin a visual journey.

Once immersed in my image sea, other pictures start to reveal themselves, more spectacular ones, sometimes materializing out of a distant memory. In the morning filled with sunshine, I was on my way to school, passing the People's Plaza; the broadcasting speaker reaching to the sky, playing a familiar Mao-era song at the same time every day. This is 1993 in Lichuan, the little mountain town in Hubei province, which, like thousands of other cities in China, is about to change dramatically as the capitalist free market economy replaces the dreaded Planned Economy, but I was too young to notice that. These golden mornings have become still images, in the shadow of the broadcast speaker, a song played again and again.

An earlier picture floating in the sea: a young Chinese man standing in front of a row of tanks. I was three when the picture was taken in 1989. But again, I was not aware of it until the summer when I arrived in the United States at twenty years old. How is it I had never seen this? Sometimes, an image can be floating in the dark for many years - I suppose that one can be temporarily unencumbered by the history and memory of their own culture.

There are images I gravitate to, such as ink landscape paintings nestled throughout Chinese history. Zhu Da is a painter who captivated me initially. Literati paintings about rocks, trees, and birds, I love them for their sophisticated and effortless touch. Later, this love expanded to include ancient murals and miniature paintings. I have thousands of them floating in my sea, although I only know some of the artists and their names.

The sea of images expands every day; I also add my own images to it, but there is a danger of drowning. Signifiers can overflow like algae, and meanings may be diminished in cliché or obscurity. To reject that, one stays afloat by a repetitive exercise of letting go of pictorial burdens—those are conventions, and some are too dear to the artist. A yearning for clarity and depth helps, an impulse gushes from within, a thought of will: "create...draw...re-write." The infallible studio and the making process will serve as an anchor. One dives toward the darker part of the sea for an image that is yet unknown.

当我开始我的艺术创作过时，我想象自己在一片图像的海洋中游泳。当然，一个人游泳的海洋部分取决于她的生活经验，记忆和历史。我很清楚我所处的海域中充斥着什么样的图片；它充满了我日常环境中的静像。比如我看到我的丈夫亚当坐在椅子上，在一天辛苦工作后，他疲惫地低下头，厨房窗台上有一株摇摇晃晃的植物（正在失去叶子），后院胡桃树在刺眼的夏日下摇曳；这些简单的瞬间驱使我记录它们，是记录的开始。

一旦沉浸在我的图像中之海，其他图片开始显现出来，更壮观的图片，有时是从遥远的记忆中显现出来。在充满阳光的早晨，我正在去学校的路上，经过人民广场；广播扬声器伸向天空，每天同时播放一首熟悉的毛时代歌曲。这是1993年，位于湖北省的小山镇利川，就像中国的成千上万个其他城市一样，即将在资本主义自由市场经济取代计划经济的过程中发生巨大变化，但我当时还太小，没有注意到这一点。这些金色的早晨已经变成了静态图像，在广播扬声器的歌一样，一遍又一遍地播放。

在海洋中漂浮着的早期画面：一名年轻的中国男子站在一排坦克前面。那张照片是1989年拍摄的，那时我三岁。但再次说起，直到我20岁抵达美国的那个夏天，我才意识到这一点。为什么我以前从未见过这张照片？有时，一幅图像可以在黑暗中漂浮多年 - 我想一个人总是可以暂时的， 拒绝或者免于自己文化的历史和记忆的负担。

有些图像吸引着我，比如遍布中国历史的水墨山水画。朱耷是一位最初吸引我的画家。文人画中有关岩石，树木和鸟类的画作，我喜欢它们的精致和自然生趣。后来，这种喜爱扩展到了古代壁画和波斯细密画。我有成千上万张图片， 有的已经打印有的漂浮在我的海洋中，尽管我只认识有限其中一些艺术家和他们的名字。

图像的海洋每天都在扩展；我也会将自己的图像添加进去，但是请注意溺水的危险。象征物和虚无可能会像藻类一样泛滥，意义可能会在陈词滥调或模糊中减弱消亡。为了抵制这一点，艺术家通过重复的方式不断放下图像的负担，这些是传统，有些对艺术家来说太珍贵。对清晰和深度的渴望激励着我，内心永远涌动着一种冲动，一种意愿：“创造...绘画...重新再来一遍。” 工作室和创作本身就是的锚。我一个人潜向海洋的更深处，寻找那一张 已知和未知水乳交融的，尚未被发现的图片。