Shadows are the lack of lights.  Shadows are dark and lights are bright.  Shadows try to shade everything and the other want to clarify everything.  Shadows exist everywhere and we are surrounded by all kinds of shadows: cave dweller,s shadows or modern,s shadows of images that indulge their eyes and consuming desires.

There,re lots of examples of shadow-painting both in eastern and western history of arts.  The instances in the Chinese art history are: “drawing on the silk above the broken wall”---- Song Di, “painting plum blossoms in shadows,  ----Hua Guang, “abandoning shapes and getting shadows”---- Xia Gui, etc.  The ancient artists created landscapes and appreciated spirits and Dao through the void and solid, darkness and brightness, black and white of the shadows and lights.

Pliny alleges in his “Natural History” that the origin of western drawing is the description of human beings themselves.  The monochromes of drawing contours exist till now.  Furthermore, sculpture is of the same origin.  Boutades,  daughter drew her lover,s profile on the wall by the aid of lights and her father pasted clay onto the profile.  Then the first relief came out.

Up to the present, we retrospect our beginning of learning calligraphy, when we imitated the characters on transparent paper above the copybook and get the shapes of characters.  Besides familiar, we feel difficult to grasp both shape and spirit.  Look back to the old times, the ancients traveled in nature and created calligraphs and drawings from which they got the spirits and Dao of the nature.  Now, we shuttle through the images and shadows of the true or fictive world.  However, how could our tired bodies seek the dwelling of the souls?

I love gardening and could observe the seasons changing, lives growing and withering.  The lonely shadows of the dried bines and old trees in my garden attracted me and I started painting “shadows” from then on.  I take the references of the ancients and set the canvas directly under the shadows of the plants in my garden.  I record the shadows by the way of the cave dwellers.

Traveling around and experiencing through, offering emotions on nature, I observe the world and seek the poetries.

Catching winds and capturing shadows, watching lights and shadows, I paint on the limited canvas and grasp the spirits.  Catching winds and capturing shadows, I express my feelings by drawing or painting. Sometimes, I scratch and deliver my emotions freely, sometimes I paint people crowded together like worms and lost themselves.

Could the nimbus lost in the artistic works of the machine-copying era be obtained by us once again?