Song-dynasty shanshui painters understood landscape as the dynamic circulation of qi, not a depiction of place. Mountains rose, water descended, and meaning emerged through rhythm, emptiness, and the refusal of fixed viewpoint. David Hinton describes this tradition as a cosmology in paint: a world continually coming into being once human control withdraws.
This work enters that lineage through contemporary means. Rather than composing a scene, I release the ink through loose brushwork, into gravity, flow, and interruption, allowing form to appear as event rather than image. The vertical currents echo classical water-paths, while the absence of horizon resists closure. Like Song landscapes, the painting does not offer arrival. It holds the viewer in the living interval where transformation remains unfinished.
Art by Kate W 