I have taught the course of figure drawing for twenty years, from China to the United States. Drawings and paintings, big or small, grow everywhere in my house. Seconds to minutes, minutes to days, days to years the sketchbooks sprawl on the bookshelf.
With my Yoga music flowing around my paintings, conducting to my fingers and tip of the brush, I feel the wordless rhyme coming deep from the sea, land and space.. My heart is open, full of peace, and the body is shrinking and lighting along with the rhyme. The tip of the brush becomes sharp and increasingly heavy. Some time lines are tightly interpenetrated and intertwined determinedly, married to each other for better or worse. In others they are flowing and linger with hesitation , natural as vines or streams finding their way to the valley. In this way, the beauty of modern art is flowing out slowly from ancient caverns. I like lines for they are forthright and pure without any cacophony. This collection of work is basically telling stories by means of lines.
However, the tones of running ink is pouring free and wild, but with a desert and remote look. They are nonfigurative without restriction of light and shape. Actually, the shadow is not real shadow, it is just the “chi” of traditional Chinese painting. Their free vigour is the needs of the atmosphere on the picture. Form and configuration are realized by lines. Spilled ink expresses blends and the surge of water and ink nonfigurative and freely, which expresses tidal rise or decline in the heart of the artist. I can feel the surge of water and ink just like the scene in the old statues where memories are washed out and time brings great changes to the world.
As far as human figure is concerned, it is just like the soul, naked as when one is born, shaken out of garment before the Gate of the Hell in Rodian’s work…… I always enjoy the statues under wind and rain in the dusk of the evening. We meet such scenes often in classic Europe. Although they evidently have human form, they are very abstract much like music, coming from the ancient myth in the dusk of the evening and pursuing to ask that ancient question, “Where are we coming from? Where are we going?” Various creatures are spirited for their yearn for heaven, however, sounds from the depths of earth are magnificent and harmonious. Creatures can not tear themselves away from their decaying body. Wandering between life and death, they sometimes become Devils and sometimes become Angels. The soul, thirsty and dry, is wandering in its remote and desert heart of hearts. Between “Yin” and “Yang”, heaven and earth, the crying horizon goes farther and farther away……..
Erjun Zhao's Gallery 