Story telling

By Susie Mallett, 25th July 2010

I have been having a lovely few hours on this cooler but no longer stormy Sunday afternoon.

The serenity of these past few hours has reminded of those Sundays when my Dad would get out the jig saw and set it up on the card table. I would stand with my nose at jig-saw level so I could catch the pieces of plywood as they fell. then I would set to piecing the jigsaw together, that always told me a new story in pictures such as "The old woman who lived in a shoe" that was the double-page spread story picture in my Jack and Jill comic.

Many of these are jigsaws still being puzzled over by children in the family.

Not only do the pictures tell a story but the jigsaw pieces too. I was able to suggest difficult wiggly shapes to my Dad and he always tried to make them. One of our puzzles has a tiny piece, still in the box, that broke off.

Today I have not being making jigsaws but I have been watching stories develop. I have been watching YouTube and reading about painting exhibitions at the Hong Kong Museum of Art.

This is what I read:

Landscape painting commands great importance in the history of Chinese art despite a development that is predated by figure painting. This unique genre of Chinese painting consists in the representation in lines, ink and colour of a natural vista or spiritual realm that stems from an internalised observation of the natural world.

Zong Bing (375 – 443) of the Southern Dynasties (420 – 479) put forward his theories in Preface to Landscape Painting. He believed such works to be visual approximations of the Way, or Dao, which could then be appreciated with a serene mind even in the comfort of one's home.

By virtually transporting the painter and the viewer to Nature, landscape painting lends itself not just to viewing but also to the sense that one is travelling and living in that natural environment. It is this idea that has made the making and viewing of the art form never the same again.

Diverse in format, the vertical scrolls, albums and especially hand scrolls serve to testify how painters of those days vividly recorded their daily life, travels, and even their ideals and aspirations, through landscapes depicted in brush and ink.

In addition to gaining an understanding of how natural sights are integrated with spiritual ideas, you are warmly invited to experience for yourself how you can be transported by the paintings to enjoy the pleasure of travelling without actually making the journey.

...and this is what I watched:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3bGNix84ps

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSBXECh_hU4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=capY8ahl5qc&feature=related

Notes

Hong Kong Museum of Arts -

http://www.lcsd.gov.hk/ce/Museum/Arts/english/exhibitions/exhibitions01_jul10_02.html