Tag: Contemporary Ink Painting

  • Turning Moments into Light

    Turning Moments into Light

    A misheard line in Spinning Away becomes a playful meeting of Brian Eno’s songs and my paintings. From scattered marks to fading light and an open sea, each pairing follows a shared movement without closing down what the image might become.

  • The Empty Boat — 虚舟 (Xū Zhōu)

    The Empty Boat — 虚舟 (Xū Zhōu)

    Which painting best represents where I stand in 2026? The Empty Boat begins with Zhuangzi, ego and a rather unusual fish, while a second painting leads to a different question: what happens when a painter stops asking what a work still needs and begins asking what it wants to get rid of?

  • How to Kill Your Muse

    How to Kill Your Muse

    A summer of painting, apricot picking, tax paperwork and website repairs. New variations on The Last Rag and four poetry-book cover drafts bring me back to the work that matters most.

  • Visual Response to “The Last Rag” by Soundeagle

    Visual Response to “The Last Rag” by Soundeagle

    A piano piece becomes an experiment with twelve calligraphic units, faded colour and broken rhythm. Three versions trace my visual response to SoundEagle’s The Last Rag.

  • Light as State of Being: Light in Painting and Contemporary Ink Art

    Light as State of Being: Light in Painting and Contemporary Ink Art

    What happens when light seems to belong to a painting’s forms rather than fall upon them? From a Dutch still life and Van Gogh to my own ink works, I follow a search for cosmic light, reduction and depth.

  • When the World Shatters

    When the World Shatters

    Recent paintings, unfinished works and studies accompany my reflections on war, lost trust and environmental destruction. When the World Shatters explores how fragmented forms and expressive brushwork can echo both global upheaval and the inner distress of the individual, while leaving room for renewal.

  • Before I Gotta Go: Minimalism, Dreams and Surreal Ink Painting

    Before I Gotta Go: Minimalism, Dreams and Surreal Ink Painting

    From early surreal scenes to Oneiric Divide: why I want to paint the feelings a dream leaves behind, rather than retell its story.

  • Don’t Let the Old Man In

    Don’t Let the Old Man In

    On resisting bitterness and keeping an open spirit: political images, memories of Prague and paintings from my ZEN BRUT yearbook for 2025.

  • Terra Dystopia

    Terra Dystopia

    Terra Dystopia began as a question about the summer of 2025. Paintings, studies and fragments accompany my reflections on recurring dystopian themes—from inequality and surveillance to environmental damage—without serving as literal illustrations.

  • Cracks in the Silence

    Cracks in the Silence

    Paintings made in troubled times: my search for silence, the vulnerability of childhood, and environmental damage beneath an attractive surface.

  • State of the Art 2025

    State of the Art 2025

    State of the Art 2025 is a series of abstract self-portraits within Nothingness in Color. I explore omission, colour, musical rhythm and the dialogue between small gestures and open space.

  • Spring Potpourri

    Spring Potpourri

    Spring walks, new paintings and homemade jiaozi: a personal potpourri of landscapes, experiments with colour, political satire and good food shared at home.

  • Goodbye to the Winter

    Goodbye to the Winter

    After a difficult winter, I explore light through abstraction and reduction: white marks on black paper, a homage to Christo, minimalist ink painting and larger works that turn towards spring.

  • Meditation of the Zen Master

    Meditation of the Zen Master

    Part III concludes the imagined journey through paintings of meditation, reduction and emptiness. My reflections on the meditating figure sit alongside the original AI interpretations, with their insights, enthusiasm and limitations.

  • The Dao of Annual Planning in 2024

    The Dao of Annual Planning in 2024

    Looking back at 2024, I consider how Daoist thinking shaped my planning, daily business and painting. Alongside the year’s artworks, I reflect on SEO, AI, investing and the room a plan needs for change.

  • Blind Drawings: Artistic Expression in Darkness

    Blind Drawings: Artistic Expression in Darkness

    More than twenty drawings explore what happens when I work in complete darkness. With visual control removed, familiar poses become distorted or fragmented. Charcoal, pen and ink studies trace the relationship between academic drawing, gesture and unexpected form.

  • Daoist Aspects in My Paintings

    Daoist Aspects in My Paintings

    Recent paintings explore the relationships between sparse marks and dense black, stillness and movement, form and open space. Music and scientific reading provide further questions, while close details reveal how a figure or landscape can emerge from abstraction.

  • Visit of the Old Zen Master and Other Nonzens

    Visit of the Old Zen Master and Other Nonzens

    An imagined Zen master moves through seven paintings and a series of short verses. A personal exploration of looking, growing older, emptiness and letting go, with the images leaving room for questions rather than fixed lessons.

  • Summer Inventory

    Summer Inventory

    Taking inventory turns up paintings I thought were lost and others waiting to be reworked. This summer collection brings together Zen-inspired gestures, calligraphy, music, dance and sea studies, followed by a personal memory of a reception in July 2024.

  • Emptiness, Space, and Depth

    Emptiness, Space, and Depth

    A spring collection exploring what happens between the marks: sparse drawings, dense black forms, musical references and abstract landscapes. A personal account of simplifying my work and finding new possibilities through contrast and conversation.

  • Essence in Art: Less Is More

    Essence in Art: Less Is More

    A few painted experiments ask what remains when detail and decoration fall away. Short verses, an ensō variation, jazz and Daoist imagery offer different ways of looking for the felt character of a subject.

  • Break on Through

    Break on Through

    Exhibitions and frustrating dealings with the art world bring me back to the studio. Two paintings follow the idea of passage: one through the energy of rock music, another through the memory of an Egyptian wall painting.

  • Selection of New Works

    Selection of New Works

    Palm-tree sketches from Sharm El Sheikh lead into calligraphic gestures and paintings of desert, sea and fading dreams. A few close-up photographs follow the textures that caught my eye along the way.

  • Between Calligraphy and Painting

    Between Calligraphy and Painting

    Years of calligraphy practice shape how I paint: the weight of a stroke, the space around it and the rhythm of the whole. These studies follow that connection from broad gestures to dense layers of writing.

  • Birthday Present from Confucius

    Birthday Present from Confucius

    Turning seventy prompts a few jokes, a second look at Confucius and some thoughts on curiosity, painting and gratitude. A favourite poem by Erich Fried offers another kind of birthday present.

  • New Yearbook Is Out

    New Yearbook Is Out

    Five signed yearbooks, surprising blog statistics and a more difficult question: what can artists contribute to opposing war? A December 2023 studio update, with early drafts for a peace initiative.

  • Day Dream Job

    Day Dream Job

    At seventeen I imagined earning a living by dreaming. These paintings return to the brief interval when dream fragments fade into waking life. An extra revisits my experience of using AI to improve the language of a blog article.

  • Between Here and There

    Between Here and There

    Dream fragments linger between sleep and waking. Four paintings approach that uncertain space through the Exit series, The Magic Sea and an imagined creature seen from a child’s point of view.

  • Between Cold and Heat

    Between Cold and Heat

    While recovering from illness in October 2023, I returned to an old Beijing portrait, explored variations of a young monk and made an untitled sequence in response to troubling news. The experiments use graphics software and AI-assisted processing.

  • And the Beat Goes On

    And the Beat Goes On

    A studio update from October 2023: The Magic Sea continues, material studies test different surfaces, and a Firebird painting opens a more direct approach to a musical subject.

  • Yin Yang and the Journey of Artistic Expression

    Yin Yang and the Journey of Artistic Expression

    Two ink paintings, a promotional video and a glittering transformation: I consider how new images affect my visual memory, and where AI-assisted presentation sits alongside my own painting practice.

  • When the Let-Go Period Is Over

    When the Let-Go Period Is Over

    A small ink painting and the illustrations for Wolfgang Kubin’s Das Buch der Zähren become two experiments in presentation. The paintings are my own; virtual interiors offer another way to encounter them.

  • Not Nothing This Time, But

    Not Nothing This Time, But

    From “more nothing” to catalogue covers: I try out ways of showing my paintings in imagined rooms, including settings for children. These AI-assisted mock-ups explore how a room changes the way a picture is seen.

  • Works on Meditation

    Works on Meditation

    After a period of reduction, I returned to fuller paintings with meditation still in mind. Four works explore restless thought, light over water, dream fragments and an unsettling piece of news from my spa stay.

  • About Letting Go

    About Letting Go

    My paintings had become opulent again. These studies explore what happens when I leave familiar effects behind and ask how little can remain while the picture still feels like mine.

  • What Game Shall We Play Today?

    What Game Shall We Play Today?

    An imaginary discussion becomes a game about knowledge, belief and shared conventions. Zen, money and measurement lead me back to a question: which certainties am I willing to examine?

  • Cucumber Cutting, Abstraction and Salome

    Cucumber Cutting, Abstraction and Salome

    What connects slicing a cucumber, diving and Salome? A reflection on attending to the senses, leaving descriptive details behind and finding a painterly language for an experience.

  • Two Links – TV Portrait and Dao Index

    Two Links – TV Portrait and Dao Index

    The broadcast is here: a short portrait within a wider programme on China and Austria. Alongside it, a Daoist Talks index and a painting made around Easter.

  • Bada Shanren & the Daoist Concept of Ziran (Naturalness)

    Bada Shanren & the Daoist Concept of Ziran (Naturalness)

    What makes a few brushstrokes feel alive? Bada Shanren’s fish lead me from the Daoist idea of ziran to empty space, abstract painting and my own experiments with “fishness”.

  • Environment and Nature: Two Painting Studies

    Environment and Nature: Two Painting Studies

    Two tentative studies explore my unease about environmental destruction, through divided landscapes, shifting perspectives and a darker variation on Poetry from the Sky.

  • A Poem About One of My Paintings

    A Poem About One of My Paintings

    A playful idea for a children’s book led to an unexpected collaboration. Dominik Alexander chose Scene at the Waters and wrote a poem in response, with complete freedom to follow the image.

  • The Magic Sea

    The Magic Sea

    An opera in which painted forms, light and space carry the story. The Magic Sea follows a visual sequence from darkness to luminous openness, while leaving room for the project to change.

  • New Horizon

    New Horizon

    Before a Red Sea diving trip, abstract studies lead me to a question about painting: what changes when I imagine a horizon behind me as well as in front?

  • Dao in Chinese Poetry: Li Bai and the Wild Geese

    Dao in Chinese Poetry: Li Bai and the Wild Geese

    Li Bai’s Quiet Night Thought and the Chan image of geese reflected in water lead from opposites and empty space to spontaneity in painting. A personal memory of Wang Ziwu accompanies the reading.

  • State of the Art 2023 – A Step Further

    State of the Art 2023 – A Step Further

    My 2023 self-portrait turns from outward likeness towards an inner world. Looking through two versions, I consider opposing forms, the pull of the centre, and a step from shade into light.

  • Ginkgo Leaves in Autumn and Winter

    Ginkgo Leaves in Autumn and Winter

    The ginkgo outside my house turns the meadow gold in autumn. These studies follow leaves into winter, through veils of pale paint, towards the first thought of spring.

  • Project in the Home Straight – Almost

    Project in the Home Straight – Almost

    For Wolfgang Kubin’s poetry volume, colour had to give way to black and white. I assembled more than fifty possibilities and considered how whole paintings and details might accompany the poems.

  • Daoist Talks (VI): Principles of Dao in Painting

    A bamboo leaf, a dancer’s movement, a red peony: these examples help me think about naturalness in painting. The apparent freedom of a brushstroke rests on practice, yet must remain alive.

  • Getting Rid of the Blues…

    Getting Rid of the Blues…

    What happens when red replaces blue in a painted dream? I revisit a study in red, two December experiments, and the movement and stillness that continue to interest me.

  • Painting Through Winter Depression: An Ink Art Series

    Painting Through Winter Depression: An Ink Art Series

    During a winter low, I pick up my brush and see what comes. These paintings trace the movement from dark, heavy forms towards more playful calligraphic marks and openings of light.

  • Dao and Zen in Chinese Painting: An AI Experiment

    Dao and Zen in Chinese Painting: An AI Experiment

    A Christmas conversation in 2022 led me to ask AI about Dao and Zen in Chinese painting. I share its response alongside my paintings and reflect on the limits of labels, the appeal of spontaneous brushwork and my own position as an artist.

  • How an Idea Takes Root and Persists

    How an Idea Takes Root and Persists

    Some images accompany us for years: leaves falling into a meadow, a twig frozen against a window, a ribbon drifting through light. These memories gradually became Poetry from the Sky.

  • Because It’s Wednesday Again…

    Because It’s Wednesday Again…

    The fifth painting in a new series brings calligraphic forms into a landscape-like space. A few thoughts on its pink line, its sense of distance, and the opposing qualities I want to hold together.

  • New Works for Old Series

    New Works for Old Series

    Two new paintings return me to gestural abstraction and abstract surrealism. A Gansu cultural event and a bilingual Theodor Storm poetry book bring the work into other conversations.

  • The Dreamweaver’s Daughters: Ink Paintings on Dreams

    The Dreamweaver’s Daughters: Ink Paintings on Dreams

    The Dreamweaver’s Daughters and Wolf Hour approach the uncertain space between sleeping and waking. Two abstract ink paintings in which forms emerge, combine and dissolve without settling into a single scene.

  • Three New Abstract Ink Paintings on Zen and Dao

    Three New Abstract Ink Paintings on Zen and Dao

    Three paintings, a few thoughts, and plenty left unexplained. I approach Zen and Daoism here as a painter playing with ideas, rather than as a teacher offering answers.

  • Daoist Talks (I): Zhuangzi’s Butterfly Dream in Ink Painting

    Daoist Talks (I): Zhuangzi’s Butterfly Dream in Ink Painting

    Zhuangzi dreams of being a butterfly; my goldfish dreams of being a bird. Through a contemporary ink painting, I explore shifting viewpoints, the spaces between forms, and what we bring to a picture when we look at it.

  • From Daoism to Zen in Chinese Painting

    From Daoism to Zen in Chinese Painting

    Two paintings open a personal path from Daoist contrasts towards the openness I associate with Zen. Reflections on picture space, vitality and Xie He’s qiyun shengdong.

  • Two Book Covers and One Dragon

    Two Book Covers and One Dragon

    Two poetry books call for different approaches to cover design and illustration. Alongside the work for Theodor Storm and Wolfgang Kubin, I return to my dragon series.

  • Book Cover Designs for Theodor Storm’s Poems

    Book Cover Designs for Theodor Storm’s Poems

    Six early cover designs and two sample spreads for Theodor Storm’s poems in German and Chinese, alongside notes on my book projects and painting in September 2022.

  • Too Young to Die – Giving Unfinished Paintings Another Chance

    Too Young to Die – Giving Unfinished Paintings Another Chance

    Two piles of unfinished paintings, a few life-saving brushstrokes and a Jethro Tull joke. Alongside the rescued works: new bookmarks and notes from July 2022.

  • Minor, Major and a Video – Recent Painting Experiments

    Minor, Major and a Video – Recent Painting Experiments

    A bookmark video offers a quiet counterweight to recent painting experiments, from pale landscapes and rediscovered sketches to a new kind of depth in abstraction.

  • Gold, History, Friends, Sinology and Luxury

    Gold, History, Friends, Sinology and Luxury

    A week in June 2022, between gold-leaf experiments, new art videos, Wolfgang Kubin’s reading and a book presentation at Concordia. The real luxury is time for art, conversation and friends.

  • Only One Picture This Time – “Rheingold”

    Only One Picture This Time – “Rheingold”

    One painting this time: Rheingold combines the atmosphere of my dream sequences with Chinese calligraphy and early thoughts on translating Wagner’s musical ideas into painting.

  • Farewell Beijing, Hello Chongqing: A Traveling Exhibition

    Farewell Beijing, Hello Chongqing: A Traveling Exhibition

    The move of my 2022 exhibition from Beijing to Chongqing brought back three visits, encounters with painter Xue Mingde, painting on the Yangtze and an unforgettable evening at the opera.

  • Zen and the Arts: Emptiness, Simplicity and Presence

    Zen and the Arts: Emptiness, Simplicity and Presence

    What do I mean by a Zen moment in painting? Childhood images, a donkey sketch, calligraphy and landscape details offer a personal approach to presence, movement and empty space.

  • In Guangming Daily Again: Art and Cultural Exchange

    In Guangming Daily Again: Art and Cultural Exchange

    Guangming Daily published another report about my work and cultural exchange between Austria and China on 30 April 2022. Alongside the newspaper pages, I share a new turquoise ink painting.

  • Teaser for Next Exhibition

    Teaser for Next Exhibition

    A short virtual gallery tour from April 2022, with works on paper shown at an imaginary scale. At the time, a planned exhibition in Beijing had been postponed again.

  • Études – Small Studies and Quiet Experiments

    Études – Small Studies and Quiet Experiments

    I use études for the small, open-ended experiments that differ from studies for a finished painting. Three sheets explore movement, opposites and the way a title can change what we see.

  • metaverse (V)

    metaverse (V)

    A leaf becomes a wing; a scene in water becomes uncertain; a near-photographic surface resists description. Three final paintings explore the shifting boundary between recognition and abstraction.

  • metaverse (IV)

    metaverse (IV)

    Can a painted form be a fish and not quite a fish? Morning and night in my metaverse open questions about recognition, ambiguity and the different inspirations I find in Zen and Schrödinger’s cat.

  • metaverse (III)

    metaverse (III)

    A dragon, the first signs of order and a few miles before the end of time: three paintings explore the boundaries of my imagined metaverse and the expressive power of leaving things out.

  • Metaverse Project Started (II)

    Metaverse Project Started (II)

    In March 2022, I decided to develop my own metaverse series. Before returning to the paintings, I reflect on commercial promises, digital territory and the wordplay behind my “Bored Monk”.

  • My Ukraine Contribution – A Small Personal Gesture

    My Ukraine Contribution – A Small Personal Gesture

    A dove of peace felt almost too familiar a symbol, yet it became the starting point for this abstract response to the war in Ukraine in March 2022. Alongside the painting, I recall a night in Kabul.

  • Studies for Oil Paintings – Early Ideas on Paper

    Studies for Oil Paintings – Early Ideas on Paper

    Three rough studies help me think through composition, colour and movement before returning to oil painting. Landscapes, the sea and organic forms offer starting points for work that cannot simply repeat my ink techniques.

  • state of the art 2022

    state of the art 2022

    My 2022 “State of the Art” self-portrait began well, until distraction left fingerprints in wet ink. A note on a changing state of mind, carelessness and trying to salvage a painting.

  • my kind of metaverse (I)

    my kind of metaverse (I)

    In February 2022, I began exploring a metaverse of my own through painting. These first works and their details bring the microcosm and macrocosm into an imagined world whose direction is still open.

  • Flyer for my Beijing Exhibition

    Flyer for my Beijing Exhibition

    A February 2022 note on the flyer for my planned Beijing exhibition: sixteen recent works, the painting used in the design, and the people whose support made my participation possible.

  • Cats in Chinese Painting

    Three cat paintings raise a question: what makes one more compelling than another? Looking closely at Zhu Da’s cat, I reflect on what is left unpainted, the appeal of simplicity and wu wei.

  • The Meaning of a Dot in Chinese Painting & Calligraphy

    The Meaning of a Dot in Chinese Painting & Calligraphy

    A dot is a short stroke with a life of its own. Brushwork exercises and three versions of one painting explore what this small mark can change.

  • Light in Arts – A Short Reflection on Illumination

    Light in Arts – A Short Reflection on Illumination

    Feininger, the light inside the Sagrada Família and a view from beneath the ice: three paintings and the associations behind them.

  • snow and ice and corona

    snow and ice and corona

    Winter studies from the Corona series, with thoughts on painting snow and ice against the background of lockdown and Austria’s winter tourism.

  • Painting Through Winter Depression

    Painting Through Winter Depression

    Paintings from several decades of difficult winters, and a personal reflection on the tension between technical assurance and another kind of expressive force.

  • New Abstract Surrealist Ink Paintings

    New Abstract Surrealist Ink Paintings

    Three unfinished paintings, a few weeks of distance and the small changes that can make a work feel complete.

  • Triptych Variant: A New Version in Ink

    Triptych Variant: A New Version in Ink

    A new left-hand panel changes the balance of Waltzing Corona. Two arrangements, and a decision to keep the original triptych together.

  • Waltzing Corona: A Triptych on Balance and Yin-Yang

    Waltzing Corona: A Triptych on Balance and Yin-Yang

    Three panels on dance and absence at the start of 2022, with a close look at their brushwork, empty spaces and shifting balance.

  • About My Surrealist Work: From Early Influences to Abstraction

    About My Surrealist Work: From Early Influences to Abstraction

    Surrealism entered my work through literature. It later met Chinese painting and calligraphy, and still shapes my questions about intention, chance and emerging images.

  • A Landscape Painting with Two Vanishing Points

    A Landscape Painting with Two Vanishing Points

    Two directions into one landscape: a calm blue distance above and a restless depth below. A compositional experiment that also became a reflection on the environment.

  • New Directions: Homage to Hans Hartung and Wagner’s Ring

    New Directions: Homage to Hans Hartung and Wagner’s Ring

    A pause in my Covid-19 series leads towards a tribute to Hans Hartung and paintings shaped by the final scene of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung.

  • Corona and the Sea: Painting the Invisible

    Corona and the Sea: Painting the Invisible

    Three attempts to paint the sea as a metaphor for attraction, restriction and uncertainty. Notes from November 2021 on my Covid-19 series.