Dao and Zen for Kids
I had intended to call this post “More Nothing”, or something equally promising. My marketing director objected. Nothing was freely available, he pointed out, and everyone could afford it. If I kept offering nothing but more nothing, my readers might soon feel nothing for me either. I rarely admit that I am wrong, but perhaps I am making progress.
Then a Chinese expression came to mind: 给他们颜色看看 — literally, “show them some colour”. It normally carries the sharper sense of teaching someone a lesson; here I am borrowing the words for a gentler purpose. So let us have some colour, though not too much to begin with.
The images below are catalogue drafts from 2023. The paintings are my own; the rooms, hanging arrangements and lighting are AI-assisted mock-ups. They show imagined settings, rather than installations that actually took place.
I wanted to make a catalogue showing the paintings in different rooms. Some readers find parts of my work difficult to approach, which is perfectly understandable. A picture seen in a room, with a frame and a little space around it, may invite a different response from the same image on a screen.
Of course, that simple idea set off a firework of possibilities. In my head I was already working on catalogue eight or nine.
Step by Step
First, three more rough cover designs for the original catalogue. Some are deliberately restrained; even the title, Dao Zen Set, tries to stay slim.
I introduced the pink-and-brown work in The Flow of Qi in Chinese Ink Painting. Here it appears above a tea table in an imagined room.
Dao and Zen for Children
I have mentioned my children’s book project before. As the collection grew, I began wondering whether the storytelling could extend to pictures on walls, from a child’s room to a classroom. This was the cover draft:
“Dao and Zen for children” may sound unusual. I am thinking of pictures that leave room for curiosity and invented stories, rather than lessons in philosophy. Adults usually choose what goes on the walls, and familiar characters often win. So perhaps I have to begin with the adults.
I will spare us the other catalogue projects for now. These further pages explore how different pictures might sit among furniture, toys and everyday activity.
The room matters to me because the philosophical ideas behind the paintings are not separate from looking at them. I want to see whether the work can hold its own in a carefully considered setting, while leaving the viewer free to find something I had not planned.
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The Children’s Book of My Last Post · The Flow of Qi in Chinese Ink Painting · Book Cover Designs for Theodor Storm’s Poems
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