Su Tung-p’o, the great eleventh century scholar, painter and connoisseur wrote of his friend’s work,
When I savour Mo-chieh’s poem’s, I find paintings in them; When I look at Mo-chieh’s paintings, there are poems in them. (1)
In the work of the twenty-first century landscape painter, Ming Ren, one finds poetry as well. Continue reading “Poetry in Painting: The Work of Ming Ren”
In every artist there’s a solid streak of sheer bravery. My friend the painter Ming Ren has it. Continue reading “MING REN : “Magic Happenings””
The work of art calls; the viewer, the listener, the reader responds. The viewer’s senses respond to the seduction of color and light, scale and form, the place of the work in a gallery, a museum, or home (or even the dump—perhaps a shining treasure in the trash). Continue reading “Call and Response, the Paintings of Ming Ren”
When my fellow schoolmate Ming Ren returned from America, he brought back his new catalog of his most recent works. When friends visit from afar, there is always the sense of nostalgia borne by a familiar passing breeze. These new works allow one to experience that, as if one is floating among the clouds. Continue reading “The wind is swirling and the clouds are floating”
On a recent Monday evening, I helped my sixteen-year-old son prepare for his upcoming physics test. We reviewed formulas for velocity, gravitational pull, momentum, acceleration, and centripetal force. Immediately following our study session, we began talking about a show of Ming Ren’s paintings that we had both seen. Continue reading “A FORCE OF NATURE”
“Fire and water have qi but do not have life. Grasses and trees have life but do not have perceptivity. Fowl and beasts have perceptivity but do not have yi (sense of right and wrong, duty, justice). Men have qi, life, perceptivity, and yi.” Continue reading “How Qi Finds a Home in the Artist’s Studio”
20th century commenced the era of abstractism as a demonstrator of art forms. It integrates reality with spirituality, art with life, internal world with physical ambience, therefore depicts the new cognition of the nature in an astonishing manner. Continue reading “Kaleidoscopic Images-In honor of Ming Ren and his works”
I came to know Ming Ren and his work only a little over a year ago when I moved to San Francisco. But once we met, I feel I had known him all along, in a fundamental way. That is because his art demonstrates a life-long, and still ongoing, exploration and negotiation of artistic languages of China and the West, a topic that interests me deeply. Continue reading “Reading Ming Ren: Some Random Thoughts”
