Painting the Dao

105 ak21.79 Strolling through the Gates of Wonder Ink and watercolour on xuan paper, mounted for framing Two panels, each 177.0 × 47.8 cm, Hong Kong, completed early January 2022 Six artist seals 水松石山房 Shuisongshi shanfang (Water, Pine and Stone Retreat) 如如居士 Ruru Jushi (Retired scholar who believes all doctrines equal) 竹虛老人 Zhuxu laoren (Old man as empty inside as bamboo) 山外山樵 Shanwai shanqiao (Mountain woodcutter who is not in the mountains) 養石閒人 Yangshi xianren (Idler who cherishes stones) 石狂 Shikuang (Stone fool) inscr iption As the efficient Qing conquerors settled into their new lands, I sojourned with a wealthy scholar, an old friend who declined to serve the new masters from beyond the passes. Instead he spent his remaining years in aesthetic delight at his extensive estate in Jiangnan. We were soon joined by another guest, a wanderer and staff master who brought with him two impressive walking staves that resembled a pair of deer and looked entirely natural, although the hand that holds the chisel is also a part of nature. They were portals, Gates of Wonder through which the Dao might readily be accessed. My host invited some other local friends to an elegant gathering as the summer opened up the whole estate, with his many strange stones gathered over the generations, to elegance. The precise nature of the outcome is difficult to call to mind, but all agreed thereafter that stones, staves and guests had at some stage spontaneously dissolved into the Dao. We had all enjoyed his excellent plum wine, so the details are somewhat hazy, but I recall them to the brush as best I can, sipping more judiciously on different wine these several centuries later. Inscribed by the Master of the Water, Pine and Stone Retreat at the Garden at the Edge of the Universe in the early days of 2022.