Tag: Zen and Daoism
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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?
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A Conversation with a Skull
A skull answers Zhuangzi in a dream and overturns his assumptions about life and death. A short retelling from chapter 18 of the Zhuangzi, accompanied by five of my earlier works.
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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.
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Dot and Emptiness: The Essence of Chinese Art
How can a small ink mark change an entire painting? Brush exercises, ensō circles and Liang Kai’s Li Bai Strolling lead from the making of a dot to the active role of unpainted space.
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Pure Dao – Shi Dong Si 石洞寺
At Shi Dong Si, stone bridges and forest light lead to underworld paintings and a phoenix ceiling. A personal reflection on religious imagery, shadow and harmony during the Yunnan journey.
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Dao and Zen Again: Applying Eastern Philosophy to Contemporary Ink Painting
During an enforced pause in autumn 2025, vivid dreams led me back to sparse abstract painting. I look at the warm and cool marks through my interest in Dao and Zen, then recount one dream alongside photographs from earlier travels.
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Autumn Reflections
Four short fictional poems explore decay, deception and the fall of a familiar figure. English semi-haiku, Chinese adaptations and my calligraphy meet in an autumn experiment, with a look at how the final poem changed through revision.
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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.
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On Giving, Taking, and What Truly Matters
What does “be kind” mean in practice? Memories of a Cambodian tuk-tuk driver, a wedding in Sri Lanka and a prison wall in Colombo lead to personal reflections on giving and human dignity.
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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.
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Nothingness in Color
Nothingness in Color continues my imagined journey to the Zen master. On black paper, scattered colour and calligraphic marks explore rhythm, open space and the search for an unaffected artistic voice.
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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.
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Depression: A Journey Through the Long Winter.
Paintings from a difficult winter: self-doubt, memories of childhood and experiments with colour after my Zen master series. A personal reflection on depression and the work it prompted.
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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.
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Journey to the Zen Master
Part II moves through the imagined environment of the Zen master, from rugged mountain forms to open space and green gardens. The paintings and original AI readings are followed by memories of my journeys on the Trans-Siberian Railway.
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The Journey to the Zen Master
Part I of an imagined journey to a Zen master. Eight paintings follow a train ride from the station toward an increasingly open landscape, accompanied by my reflections and the AI interpretations used in the original experiment.
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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.
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Emperor Huizong: When Rulers Still Loved Art
Emperor Huizong’s bird-and-flower paintings and Slender Gold calligraphy still fascinate me. His cultural achievements also raise a difficult question: how does artistic sensitivity relate to the moral responsibilities of a ruler?
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Wabi Sabi and the Aesthetics of Imperfection
In this article, I share my personal approach to Wabi Sabi through paintings, Japanese aesthetics and reflections on Chinese xieyi painting. Beyond repaired pottery, I explore imperfection, impermanence and the space left for a viewer’s imagination.
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Theme and Variations
A fading blossom changes through a series of ink drawings. As the stem disappears and the petals become less descriptive, Chinese verse, white space and musical rhythm take on more of the work. A personal account of removing and adding.
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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.
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What Is Reality? What Is Nothingness?
A painter’s comparison of quantum physics, Zen Buddhism and Daoism, with attention to their different meanings of reality and emptiness. Abstract works and optical illusions lead back to questions of perception, form and the space between marks.
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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.
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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.
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Can We Hear a Painting?
Can music be translated into painting? An exploration of rhythm, silence and sound through abstract art inspired by Wagner, Bruckner, Bach, Shakuhachi, Arvo Pärt and Brian Eno.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Red Dao and Black Zen: Painted Calligraphy
From green and turquoise layers to Red Dao and Black Zen, I follow the point where repeated writing becomes painting. Two process videos show how brushwork, rhythm and reduction shape these works.
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2024: Defy or Embrace?
A greeting for 2024, an unreliable economic forecast based on spam emails, and two passages from Chinese classics. The post ends with a voice from my old Vienna neighbourhood.
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Wu Wei: Effortless Action in Daoism and Chinese Painting
Wu wei does not mean a lack of skill or attention. Cook Ding’s story offers a way to consider painting: learning what the material allows, responding without force, and knowing when to slow down or put the brush down.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The Flow of Qi in Chinese Ink Painting
Two paintings become a way to follow the flow of qi: through brushstrokes, intervals and the directions that connect them. Annotated diagrams trace one possible walk through a composition.
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Wabi-Sabi, Japanese Paper & the Beauty of Empty Space
An unsatisfying sheet of paper leads me back to Tanizaki, the character of materials and the shape of empty space. These studies ask what a painting can gain when more of the paper is left to speak.
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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?
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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”.
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Ego vs. Self in Daoism: A Western & Asian View
From Saint Anthony resisting temptation to a figure resting against a tiger: paintings lead into questions of desire, self-assertion and how Daoist and Zen texts can change the way we look.
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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.
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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.
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Gone They Are
A reader’s suggestion about light led me back to the painting table. I followed the dark forms into lighter, more open spaces, and found that the process brought some sunshine into my winter days.
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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.
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Liang Kai: The Story of Eight Eminent Monks – Daoist Talks (IV)
A close look at Liang Kai’s Eight Eminent Monks, followed by a personal memory of meeting the painter Lin Kai in Beijing in 1982. Buddhist stories, a red-robed Bodhidharma, and an inscription whose humour took years to unfold.
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Daoist Talks (III): The Cosmos in One Dot
A practical exercise in looking at brush dots: their shape, rhythm and place in a painting. With examples by Shitao and a reflection on the relationship between a small mark, the ensō and the whole picture.
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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.
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Daoist Talks (II): The Basics
Daoism in Chinese painting: a personal introduction to xieyi, calligraphic brushwork, yin and yang, and the ways a landscape invites us to look. With examples by Shitao, Su Shi, Yun Shouping and Dong Qichang.
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Hakuin’s Koan: The Sound of One Hand Clapping
An open hand, a dark ground, and a question that resists a quick answer. My painting approaches Hakuin’s one-hand kōan as a meditation aid, rather than an illustration of a solution.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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New Abstract Surrealist Ink Paintings
Three unfinished paintings, a few weeks of distance and the small changes that can make a work feel complete.
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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.
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Gestural Painting: A Step Further
Can an abstract painting stir a particular feeling? New gestural works bring Chinese calligraphic structure into conversation with psychology and emotion.
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The Essence of Chinese Painting: Emptiness and the Meaning of White
How can unpainted paper become as expressive as a brushstroke? A painter’s reflection on light, open space, Liang Kai and Bada Shanren, with Daoist and Buddhist texts kept in their distinct contexts.
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Mu Qi’s Six Persimmons: An Interpretation
My interpretation of Six Persimmons follows its ink tones, intervals and relationships, reading a life journey and a host with five guests in the small group.
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Zha Shibiao: A Simple Painting and Yet a Treasure
Two intertwined trees, a boatman and an inscription: a close reading of Zha Shibiao’s album leaf, with reflections on brushwork, host and guest, and the space beyond the marks.
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The Essence of Chinese Painting (III)
How does a painting guide the eye? I explore beginning, development, turn and resolution through Pan Tianshou’s compositions, implied connections and the active role of empty space.