Scenery of Lotus in Mountain

      "It is so fun to go out traveling that one almost forgets to come home." "We don't necessarily need musical instruments for music to pop up. We can just listen to the music of nature from the mountains and water." Since ancient times, scholars have always considered the natural landscapes as the spiritual homeland where they could do what they want and enjoy themselves. They could either go hiking or approach the water to see flowers and plants as well as fishes and birds. They could also get some tea, enjoy the moon on the mountain, play chess, and appraise painting as well as discuss metaphysics and Zen. In addition, they could live privately at a secluded place and engage some cultural creation activities such as writing poetry and depicting painting. They could live in seclusion and forget everything from the mundane, just enjoy the innocent landscape. In this way, the mountain life culture had been developed to be an important brand of seclusion culture.

      The early origins of the seclusion culture can be traced back to the late Shang Dynasty and early Western Zhou Dynasty regarding the story of Bo Yi and Shu Qi. They refused to eat food from the Zhou and hid in the mountains. According to “Historical Records - Bo Yi Biography”, after King Wu of Zhou Dynasty settled down the turmoil of the last phase of the Shang Dynasty, the world was dominated by the Zhou. However, both Bo Yi and Shu Qi felt shameful and refused to eat the food produced from the Zhou in order to obey their national righteousness. Instead, they hid in the Shouyang Mountains and only ate wild vegetables." Based on this, the seclusion of Bo Yi and Shu Qi was just a political attitude reflecting their unwillingness to cooperate with those in power at the time. Until after the new generation, seclusion is no longer limited to expressing a personal political attitude. It is more to reflect one's attitude towards life, and also the traditional scholars' retreat after their career failures. As a reformer of Confucianism, Mencius advocated, "When you are not successful, you can cultivate your own personal character. When you are successful, you can make the world better." This is obviously an indication of life direction for later generations of literati. In the history, Zhang Liang, Zhu Geliang, Li Ji, Liu Ji and so on, all could be representative figures who were the prime ministers during the peak of their careers who lived in seclusion during their down time. Tao Yuanming, with his poetry, had also become the most famous hermit in Chinese history. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries of United Kingdom, there were also lakeside poets represented by Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Saosai. They denied urban civilization, longing for sentimentalism, and praising for nature. Perhaps this can also be considered as a foreign country's mountain life culture.

      In this series, I try to express the relationship between the lotus pond and mountain with a more relaxed and comfortable attitude. During the process of my art creation, I have been inspired a lot by the ancient Chinese seclusion culture. On these pictures, I intentionally dilute the image of the mountain and highlight the image of the lotus pond. We can imagine sitting alone in front of the window to watch the scenery of lotus and mountain. We can also imagine walking on the mountain path to see the quiet lotus pond with a distant mountain behind. In addition, we can imagine walking along with a couple of friends on the side of lotus pond to enjoy the view of the mountain and a breath of fresh air. Although the paintings from this series all display lotus ponds and mountain peaks, different lighting effects have been naturally formed due to a diversity in time, weather, and viewing angle.