Extract from: Beyond the Stage of Time, Volume I Realised Realms. The Master of the Water, Pine and Stone Retreat

14 enormous wall space. We put on a couple of exhibitions in the gallery soon a ft er- wards. I wasn’t his worldwide agent, and indeed only ever met him twice—both times in Hong Kong, where he lived—but I was his agent in England until he died. I never saw him paint and he never demonstrated painting for me, but I have collected his works from the outset. A ft er his death, I continued to deal in his paint- ings and add to my own collection. Another of the earliest in fl uences was Fang Zhaoling ( 1914 – 2006 ), who had a studio in London as well as one in Hong Kong, so I was much closer to her and we became fi rm friends for the rest of her life. I frequently visited her studios in both cities to watch her paint and to view her recent works. She did many demonstration paintings for me, and we sometimes even did joint works, where the brush would be handed back and forth between us—an extremely e ffi cient teaching exercise. In all the years I knew her, I was never able to leave Fang Zhaoling’s studio, or even look at the many books and catalogues of her works, without an irresistible urge to paint in her outrageously sophisticated style of re-acquired naivety. Th is is a key concept in Chinese painting and calligraphy. First you learn and re fi ne the skills, and then you pare away the surface to reveal the bones, the essence. In her paintings, this is expressed by a form of depiction where she returns to the way a child or innocent would see things, but with the sophistication of a sage. It’s worth mentioning that this is not just a Chinese tradition. Picasso said of an exhibition of children’s art, ‘When I was the age of these children I could draw like Raphael; it took me many years to learn how to draw like these children.’ I still enjoy working in Fang Zhaoling’s style, particularly if I feel myself slipping into a rut or being too careful or precious about what I am doing. Th e moment I slip into her style, it all falls into perspective again and any little concerns evaporate in the sheer joy of the dancing, uninhibited brush. When I moved to Hong Kong in 1975 , I was able to spend a lot more time with artists whose work I admired. C. C. Wang suggested that I visit Ho Huai-shuo (b. 1941 ) in Taiwan; I was impressed by both him and his work, and I quickly became his agent. I also bought a lot of his works for my own collection at the time, and for a couple of close friends who were collecting alongside me. He was a generous teacher and became a great friend, always happy to demonstrate, teach and encourage me. Liu Kuo-sung lived and taught at the Chinese University of Hong Kong for many years a ft er his in fl uential time with the Fi ft h Moon Group in Taiwan, and I forged a very close relationship with him. He was particularly successful as a teacher because of his open-minded approach to art in general, and his generosity with time and ad- vice in particular—both to his formal students and to me. He taught us not just about art, but about how to become artists. Kuo-sung’s approach has always been unusually open and non-judgemental. Most artists are inclined to see their own way of painting as being somehow more to the point than anyone else’s, and are o ft en a bit sni ff y about their contemporaries. Kuo-sung has always been extremely positive, always encouraging but never nega- tively judgemental about any other artists. I learned a great deal from him—not in formal lessons, as I never painted with him, but through watching him paint. When I commissioned the Four Seasons handscroll in 1983 —one of his most famous works, which has been exhibited dozens of times since—he was living about a mile away from my own home. I visited him two or three times a week to watch him at work on it, spending hours in his studio over the many months of its production that year. He would become so involved in the painting that I suspect he had forgotten I was there much of the time, but for me it was one of the many masterclasses in the art of Chinese painting I have bene fi tted from in the studios of my artist friends. At some time in the 1980 s while visiting Ho Huai-shuo in Taiwan, I met Chen Chi-kwan ( 1921 – 2007 ). Over the years I have formed a collection of his paintings and remain entranced by them, but he was the most secretive of all the artists I knew. He never showed me his studio, never let me watch him paint and wouldn’t even tell me his methods. Even when I had fi gured out how he achieved certain e ff ects through experiments of my own, he would just smile enigmatically and avoid con- fi rming or denying my assumptions. So he was hardly a teacher as such, but I learned from his works nonetheless, and continue to do so. I did become his worldwide agent for many years and held several exhibitions of his works, which I continue to collect keenly. I became Tseng Yu-ho’s agent (Zeng Yuhe, aka Betty Ecke 1924 – 2017 ) a ft er I visit- ed her in Hawaii. She introduced me to Liu Dan, a young artist who had le ft China with his Amer- ican wife to settle in Honolulu. His technical skills in Western drawing were outra- geously impressive, as was his seriousness and integrity as an artist. He had acquired these formidable skills at an art academy in China, with Ya Ming ( 1924 – 2002 ) as one of his teachers, but had yet to fully develop a Chinese style of his own. I soon became his agent and I’ve watched him become one of the most prominent and important living exponents of the Chinese ink tradition. We have remained very close friends ever since. He visited me regularly at my home in Sussex, o ft en for prolonged periods, once painting one of his large landscapes in my studio over several weeks—thus giving me the opportunity to watch its progress and his techniques closely. On one of those visits we produced one of my favourite of all my joint works with artist friends. He painted a short handscroll of me, in Chinese robes, seated on a rocky outcrop with my favourite antique Chinese walking sta ff laid out in front of me. ho huai - shuo Cold Clouds , 1990 Water, Pine and Stone Retreat Collection, 21 . 1 . 1601 liu kuo - sung Th e Four Seasons , 1983 Water, Pine and Stone Retreat Collection, 21 . 1 . 800 chen chi - kwan Deep Freeze , 1977 Water, Pine and Stone Retreat Collection, 21 . 1 . 346 tseng yu - ho Jogging Path , 1997 Water, Pine and Stone Retreat Collection, 21 . 1 . 1734 fang zhaoling Watching the Waterfall , 1976 Water, Pine and Stone Retreat Collection, 21 . 1 . 48 liu dan Heavenly Pipes Stone , 1991 Water, Pine and Stone Retreat Collection, 21 . 1 . 1349