The air of spring filled the center of the gallery. A monumental, 18-panel work on Xuan paper arrests the viewer, even from a distance. In Peach Blossom (2016), impressionistic rouge blotches depict the petals of a peach tree, evoking sentiments of warmth, sweetness, passion and love. Layers of ink wash resemble raindrops falling on the ground, emanating gentle pink ripples from the point of contact. The density and distribution of pink and white in each panel varies—some are filled with bigger and tighter daubs, while others are embellished with rhythmic dots—offering every frame its own personality, but maintaining a delicacy throughout the work. Wang uses different densities of the striking hue to create such an effect, gracefully capturing the gestures and motions of petals found in a peach blossom, still in a moment of calmness or blown in a gentle breeze. Meanwhile, the tree trunks, sharp and angular, rendered in shades of brown and black, not only provide structure to the lightness of the peach blossoms, but also serve as connectors for the 18 panels.

The other notable work on show was Lotus, also dated 2016. Lotuses have long been depicted in Chinese ink paintings, as the plant carries many meanings in Chinese culture. Not only is it a symbol for good fortune under Buddhism (it is often regarded as the throne of Buddha), the lotus also signifies purity, as it rises out of mud to bloom, never tainted by the muck from which it grows. In this painting, the Wang uses layered tones of blue—the artist’s favorite color, which she finds to be “simply stunning” and “too beautiful for words”—to portray the bountiful growth of lotuses in West Lake. The artist once said, “Making art is sensory; when you’re creating, you really have to let go and feel the thing.” With softened forms that bleed into each other, the artist develops a sense of space, following her instincts instead of the conventions that define traditional Chinese painting. As Wang might say, the “images of nature come out of nowhere.”

When the artist was young, she was plucked from rural farmland and brought to the Affiliated High School of the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing during Mao Zedong’s disastrous Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), which led to millions of deaths due to famine and violence, as well as a shattered economy in China. Later on, in 1978, two years after the death of Mao, she would enter the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, when notes of optimism about the future were in the air. At the school, she was equipped with skills that would define a successful career—“And so it felt like it was just fate,” she would later say—and the time she spent by the quiet waters are intricately entangled with those experiences. Memories of West Lake resonate deeply within the artist, inspiring new paintings even decades later.

Sonia Yu is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.

Wang Gongyi’s “Memories of West Lake” is on view at Galerie du Monde, Hong Kong, until December 14, 2017.

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