Daoist Painting, Chinese Brushwork and Shitao
After the theory of the previous talk, I want to turn to something practical: a dot. It is a small place to begin, but perhaps not such a small subject.
My starting point is the relationship between part and whole. If we approach a painting through Daoist ideas, the smallest mark need not stand apart from the rest of nature. It participates in relationships of density and openness, movement and stillness—the interplay I have been discussing through yin and yang.
In xieyi painting, the close connection with calligraphy makes the movement of the brush especially important. Years of practice can help a painter work responsively, without forcing every stroke. That is how I understand wu wei in my own practice. It is not an excuse to dispense with learning.
The Daoist Talks index brings the series together. I return to this subject in my later essay Dot and Emptiness in Chinese Painting, based on my lecture about the relationship between the dot and emptiness.
The Omnipresence of Dao
A spot can suggest a sun. But I do not want to stop at recognising an object. When I speak of a dot carrying the cosmos within it, I mean something about the relationship between the smallest element and the whole. It is a painter’s way of thinking, rather than a claim about a physical universe hidden inside an ink mark.
Try describing a single dot without immediately calling it “just a dot”. How was it made? Where does its weight lie? Does it seem to settle, turn or spring away? The more we notice, the more it can tell us about the picture around it. I explored this in What a Dot Can Do.
Today, let us begin by giving the dot our attention. We do not need to settle a metaphysical question before we can look carefully.
Step by Step
For a first exercise, put the philosophy aside. Look at the marks below and notice how different they are.
Some are rounded and compact; others trail off or break at the edges. A dot can begin a passage, connect separate forms, or join other marks to suggest an area. Its function depends on where it sits. First notice its shape, then look at what happens around it.
A Dot as a Mirror of Our Consciousness
For me, even a small mark can preserve something of the attention with which it was made. Pressure, speed, moisture and the way the brush leaves the paper remain visible. That does not turn a painting into an infallible test of someone’s spiritual attainment. It gives us traces of an action to look at.
The diagram shows one way of forming a dot through a turning movement of the brush. Different dots require different movements; this is not a rule for every mark. Beside it is an ensō, the brushed circle associated with Zen practice. Its possible meanings include wholeness, emptiness and enlightenment.[1]
I find the comparison useful because both forms make the action of the brush visible. An ensō is not simply an enlarged dot, and Zen is not another name for Daoism. Yet bringing the two together can sharpen our attention to the beginning, movement and ending of a mark.
What I see in an ensō now differs from what I saw twenty years ago. For an exercise, imagine having one continuous stroke with which to express yourself: no corrections or decoration afterwards. What happens when you make it? And what do you notice when you return to it later?
A weekend seminar may give us a beginning, but it cannot replace years of looking and practice. The useful question is whether we have learned to see something we overlooked before.
The Purpose of Dots
Groups of dots can give a painting different rhythms. Marks arranged like hoofprints may feel forceful and dynamic; scattered like petals, they may seem still and lyrical. These are ways I read their relationships, rather than fixed meanings attached to particular shapes.
The painter need not stop and explain each decision while working. Repeated practice allows an action to become familiar enough for the hand to respond freely. That is a freedom developed through attention, not the absence of it.
Shitao, a Master of Dots
Shitao (石涛, 1642–1707) is an artist I return to for this. His thinking about the “single stroke” connects the practical act of painting with the unity of the finished work. A landscape fan in the Metropolitan Museum of Art carries an inscription in which he develops that idea.[2]
In these landscapes, the dots draw the eye without breaking the whole into isolated pieces. Look at the small human figures, then at the trees and mountains surrounding them. The figures have a place in the landscape, rather than commanding all of it.
The long scroll known as Ten Thousand Ugly Inkblots is another wonderful invitation to look beyond the idea of a blot as a mistake. Its title is deliberately provocative. Can we enjoy the varied marks without first tidying them into a familiar formula?[3]
Perhaps that is enough for today: choose one dot, follow its relationship to the next, and see how far into the painting it takes you.
Extra
A short video of my paintings accompanied this post in 2022. Unfortunately, the frames do not always suit the pictures—but the paintings are there to be seen.
Footnotes
[1] For the ensō’s varied meanings and its connection with practice, see the Asian Art Museum’s discussion of an ensō by Nantenbō. ↩
[2] Shitao, Landscape, dated 1699, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This is a further example and source for the “single stroke” concept, not an identification of the two illustrations above. ↩
[3] For Shitao’s poem accompanying Ten Thousand Ugly Inkblots, see Jonathan Hay, Shitao: Painting and Modernity in Early Qing China, chapters 6–10, available through New York University. ↩
Related articles: What a Dot Can Do · Dot and Emptiness in Chinese Painting · Daoist Talks (II): The Basics
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