This portfolio, Mountains and Rivers Without End, takes its’ name from Chinese landscape scroll paintings where the scholar travels through a long series of dramatic landscapes. The journey is symbolic of our journey through life and the many scenes we encounter.
The Li River valley has inspired artists, poets, painters, scholars and travelers for centuries with its amazing lyrical landscape. Painters such as Ch”i-Shan Wu Chin, Shou Chuan, Shan-Shui have painted the Mountains and Rivers without End. These paintings in the Freer Gallery, Cleveland Museum of Art, and Tokyo Museum of Art create the feeling of the journey within us.
The three perfections are contained in the paintings Painting, Poetry, and Calligraphy. The handwritten poems, freedom of brush, and colophons represent the moment of creation, and history of ownership. They enhance the meaning of the painting and the circumstance of it creation.
The Artist sketches, paints, writes, photographs and must transmit his meaning or feeling in the art to represent it’s purpose. So the poet or artist transforms his experience into a metaphorical representation of what he saw or felt.
These metaphorical representations of the mountains and river contemplate what the poet, scholar, painter, photographer connect together into a greater symbolic meaning within the image.
The Poet sees the beauty in these mountains and takes it home to be reborn in his sculptures, rock gardens, bonsai, painting and poetry, So that others may see his inspiration from this magical place and its’ metaphorical connection his art.
The Li River supporting life along its banks. Even today in modern times everything references the river. Food, commerce, water, life depend on it. It journeys to the sea flowing with this knowledge. The mountains standing above, observe its flow. Between heaven and earth they frame the space and time. They hid in the clouds and haze, stand in the bright light of the rare clear day, shape the night sky with their shadows and mystery. Framing our view of heaven. River, Mountain, Sky the perfect Feng Shui.