“Nothing in this world disappears; everything exists in the position where it occurred and existed. It is symbiotic with our present space-time.” Based on this temporal philosophy, this essay explores artist Mu Ran Gong’s “Soul Island” practice: Why use the Chinese brush to depict undersea realms, foreign peaks, and world landscapes unseen by the ancients? This is not a背离 of tradition, but rather, using “Fantasy-Color Freehand” as a method to activate a symbiotic way of seeing across time and space, gathering the “soul-scapes” scattered throughout the cosmos onto the contemporary picture plane.
My master, Ran Shi, said: “Nature is my teacher.” This “Nature” has acquired an unprecedented breadth of definition in the contemporary era. It is not only the sublime scenery of Mount Zhongnan in Travelers among Mountains and Streams, but also the幽蓝 of the Mariana Trench, the banner clouds atop the Himalayas, and the奇异 flowers of the Amazon rainforest. Due to geographical and technological limitations, the vision and brushes of the ancients could not reach these realms. However, within the时空观 of “the symbiosis of all things,” these景象 are not “non-existent”; they have always been in their occurring positions, shimmering with soul-light awaiting to be “seen.”
The “Soul Island”栏目 is my logbook of sailing with ink as a boat to these realms uncharted by the ancients. Its core methodology is precisely the “Fantasy-Color Freehand” system:
1. Initiating the Method of Temporal Overlays: When I depict Antarctic glaciers, what I overlay is not merely their physical form, but also the temporal sense of geological ages, the spiritual will of explorers, and the aloof意境 of “wintry forests and snowy scenes” from classical Chinese landscape. The picture thus becomes a crystallization of multiple temporal dimensions.
2. The Converging Language of Ink and Color: I use the linear rhythm of the brush to outline the skeleton of coral, and the technique of “color breaking ink” to represent the fleeting shimmer of scales on deep-sea fish schools. The traditional “ink divided into five colors” expands here into “infinite light-colors,” yet what驾驭 them remains the “Qi” and “force” contained within that brush originating from Eastern writing.
3. The Colorful Representation of Void Energy: The seafloor is not漆黑 but an energy field filled with bioluminescence and refracted light; the aurora is the most magnificent dance of void energy. I apply the “Two Lights” mental model, interweaving subjective warm and cool colors to represent this form-transcending, flowing energy itself, practicing the creative philosophy of “the ancients had no sun and sky; I supplement them.”
The ultimate purpose of all this lies in the “Fantasy-Realm Conception Method.” The truth seen by the eye (a photograph-like海底) is not the ultimate truth of the picture. The mission of painting is to “let imagination roam and wonderfully capture,” using unique painterly means to subjectively, poetically, and philosophically “re-create” the objective object. Therefore, the foreign flowers under my brush may contain the genetic code of Dunhuang colors; the foreign peaks I depict might internally resonate with the磅礴 momentum of Fan Kuan’s Travelers among Mountains and Streams. What the picture ultimately presents is a realm that possesses an objective subject yet infinitely extends into a conceptual scene, endowed with greater soul-stirring power of life.
My mission is to explore an artistic model between tradition and contemporaneity. I do not engage in转基因-like rigid grafting, nor in a hard landing that抛弃 tradition. The “Eastern Learning Advancing Westward, Cultural Blending” I pursue takes pure Eastern aesthetic genes as the体, melting and sublimating global visual experience. Let the world, through these scenes never painted by the ancients under my brush,反而 see Chinese painting more profoundly and understand that ancient yet eternal Eastern worldview—about symbiosis, about energy, about the隐秘 connections between all “Soul Islands” in the cosmos.The Fantasy-Color Freehand Art Museum and Studio of Contemporary Chinese Artist Lu Guanyu (Mu Rangong) in Hangzhou