I clean my inkstone not just to paint, But to reveal the images in my mind[1]

I believe calligraphy - the unique form of Chinese written language, composed of characters, differentiating it from all other languages – has been fundamental in forging the mental structure, the way of looking, of apprehending, the sensibility ... and more, of all those who grew up within that culture. Choosing to delimit such a huge topic only in the pictorial sphere, I would like to point out that the brush is a medium shared by both writing and painting, therefore causing their relationship to be indissoluble. The contemporary painter Wu Yiming originates from this very relationship, from this precious heritage. He draws new life from a venerated tradition which is still capable of communicating and stirring emotions. 

Wu Yiming, whose family comes from Suzhou - a city with a rich cultural heritage - recounts that he started to 'write characters' (xie zi 写字,a more modest expression compared to 'exercise calligraphy' lian shufa 联书法, that he avoids on purpose) as a teenager. When he was about 16 years old, he would devote time each day to copying texts of famous calligraphers such as Yan Zhenqing颜真卿from the Tang dynasty, in regular script (kaishu 楷書) and running script (caoshu 草書), aiming at educating his writing skill and reinforcing his willpower. The act of copying repeatedly the texts of esteemed past personalities[2], used as a way to interiorize their style, is an unknown technique in the realm of alphabetic languages, but very common in Chinese language.[3] The most important and difficult discipline is the ability to juxtapose the strokes that form a character within an empty space, while infusing them with one’s own personality, demonstrating a mastery that is interior before being physical and of the brush as emanation of the body. I have stressed the importance of 'personality' because I understand that if the writer obtains a 'whole' that is harmonious but misses both intensity and a recognizable style, or does not show anything so uniquely approaching originality, she/he won't be able to reach the highest standard, that is 'beyond standards'. The empty space[4] where the brush ventures, outlining one stroke after the other, in a fixed order, is a metaphor of the 'non being' where the 'being' originates from, and which in turn gives origin to the 'ten thousand beings'[5]. I believe that emptiness, 'non being', constitutes for humans the most difficult condition to face, although it is inevitable because it is a founding, original state.

The value, the utility[6] of calligraphic practice is not understandable to those who do not exercise it. It is unperceivable by those who do not devote themselves to it. It is an action that, although not wholly for its own sake, carries its sense, its significance in the experience of every minimal, subtle perception of the calligrapher when he touches the xuan paper with the brush imbued with ink. The type and quality of ink in each trait, the different pressure of the hand, the mood, the firmness of the arm, the mastery of the space and of the relationship between the traits (within a single character) and between the characters (in a paragraph), the kind of paper[7]... they are all variable factors that influence strongly both the process and the result. I have the feeling that the control practiced by a calligrapher is very similar to that pursued by a serious yoga practitioner: both act with material 'gratuity' and doing so they achieve a great interior enrichment. Only very few calligraphy texts are going to survive and be shared; the majority are alive during the moment they are written, then face oblivion or destruction.

The process is similar for ink paintings, realized in the same immediacy, concentration, determination, clarity. They cannot be corrected or reviewed: the characteristics of brush, ink and paper do not allow it. The paintings Wu Yiming chooses to show have been selected from at least five or six other attempts, of which the artist, who is very demanding, is not fully satisfied. The criteria are obviously wholly subjective; and often an extra stroke, or the brush imbued with too much ink, are enough to decree a painting's failure. Ink and wash painting form a completely separate world if compared to oil painting, and not because it is typically Chinese[8], nor because it claims a solid tradition or rules that have been codified throughout the centuries, rather because it requires an internal discipline that is unique and unavoidable. In this fact resides its great strength and its real, intrinsic difficulty.

Wu Yiming is perfectly aware of all this, so when referring to his works he keeps a 'low profile': he expresses himself with modesty, and stresses the distance existing between his paintings and the past masterpieces. The inspiration he gets from them does not concern the outward aspects, i.e., the choice of subjects or the composition, rather their interior strength, their expressivity, their formal quality which are for him an example and an incentive.

In some of his recent small and medium size works[9] depicting plants, the black color (many nuances of darkness) predominates, leaving very few white (empty) gaps in between one leaf and the next, or one branch to the next. From an early age, Wu Yiming greatly admired Huang Binhong's (1865/1955) non-conventional painting. That painter, now considered the last great master of shuimohua[10] , forty years ago was not fully understood and appreciated by the majority. Like him, Wu Yiming makes great use of black. The 'black, dense, thick, heavy'[11] painting of master Huang Binhong did not aim at conforming to a preexisting aesthetic standard, rather it was original and 'modern', it reached a vibrant expressivity and a new intensity that connect him to the great 'eccentric' painters of the past[12]. Likewise, the prevalence of black in Wu Yiming's works has a strong expressive value: it is a non explicit, indirect way to represent the dark times that have been grieving human beings in the last years, and especially his fellow country(wo)men, forced to remain at home for months in a row.  Having moved for family reasons to New York just before the beginning of that disquieting period, Wu was able to attend the situation of his friends in the motherland with growing concern, and his mood got darker and darker.

The percentage of paper covered by black ink - diluted to different degrees, more or less dark - corresponds approximately to the surface that is usually left white and empty. It resembles the negative of an analogical photograph, where white is black and vice-versa. The technique is the xieyi 写意 (literally, 'to write the meaning'), that sketches the subject with bold and quick brushstrokes, rather than describing it. In another three similar, more recent paintings[13], the artist adds figures of birds with colorful wings and the body immersed in inky darkness, as if descending from the sky to end up landing into a sooty world. Only the top of some leaves surface from obscurity and retain the original bright color.

The category 'flowers and birds' (huaniao 花鸟), one of the most important in traditional Chinese painting, is mostly devoted to exalting the beauty of flowers (plants) and the gracefulness of birds. Here the interpretation is very personal, without affectation, not at all decorative, rather dense with disquietude and foreboding. Yet Wu Yiming is a great lover of the flora, and tends to surround himself with plants (in soil and/or in vase) wherever he is, because he feels that nowadays it is the world of plants that can best represent beauty and hope. Such lifeforms are without the problematic characteristics of human beings: violence, greed, lack of respect for the planet Earth. On the background of thin branches, rendered predominantly in realistic hues like brown, the dark black ink alludes to the weight of our era. Trees, plants, flowers are not always painted in a similar orientation; rather they 'grow' on the background from every side, creating an odd effect that reveals and stresses the non-naturalistic intention. In two paintings[14] where a solitary tree develops horizontally from right to left, with trunk and branches in pale brown on a black background, a red bird is trying to maintain a sense of balance. But the chromatic choice does not cheer us up, rather it provokes a certain inquietude due to the evident anomaly.  A work made in the previous year[15] is composed of branches that descend from the upper left corner and develop on the background of a very beautiful blue, painted subsequently like all the other backgrounds. Here the birds, all in red with some black brushstrokes, appear to be imprisoned in an arboreal net that, instead of supporting them, prevents them from flying away.

In the numerous little paintings dedicated to naked trees, completely without leafs,[16] the color in the background slowly gives way to the white of the paper. For many years Wu Yiming has been using a technical expedient that enables him to enrich the expressive shades: he paints the subject (partly or completely), on the back of the paper[17], so that it shows through on the right side with an unusual veiled effect. A careful observer will notice that the trace left by the brush runs in a direction that is opposite to the usual one.

Other works look like informal exercises,[18] with calligraphed sentences written on the right and on the back from different angles, superimposed (rather than on the side, as is traditional) on colorful flowers and foliage, rendered with great spontaneity. The content of the texts is a disguised or more evident social or political critique. Their prosaic quality contrasts with the usual aesthetic or virtuoso appearance of the floral subjects.

I draw attention to yet another typology evident in two works[19] dating from 2021 and 2022, that show a surface fully covered by arboreal motifs, painted with colors superimposed in many skilful coats, causing the eye to wander without being caught by any particular motif unless brightly colored. Whereas in the 2021 work (Under the Williamsburg Bridge) the plants appear realistic, despite being two-dimensional and crowded, in the 2022 work (A Rug) the surface recalls a very colorful fabric or a wallpaper, resulting from complicate patterns juxtaposed with great technical mastery. In the upper right corner, we are unexpectedly struck by a mysteriously faded area, that forces us to ponder the reason for its incongruity.

Another two works[20] (Quietude in the Forest, 1 and 2, 2020 and 2023) share the same subject (trees) and colors (black ink, white background, bright blue sky), and even though in the 2020 painting a tree is painted upside down, the pictorial style recalls that of previous years. The same can be said for the paintings[21] (I mean 1, 2, 2022) that portray the artists' plants in vases[22]. The difference here is that the first is all played out in tones of blue, while in the second, realistic colors are chosen.

Besides solid black ink ground daily before beginning to paint, Wu Yiming uses the mineral pigments of traditional Chinese painting[23] and some acrylic to obtain touches of very gaudy color. For instance in one work, [24] the small plants in a vase (and outside it), are rendered with quick, free brushstrokes on a black background illuminated by red dots. They are in a rather acid green enriched by yellow and blue strokes. In the rendering of the plants, one notices a semblance of 'naturalism' that contrasts with the flatness of the composition.

To complete the vegetal subject, preferred by the artist, I would like to mention a work in which beauty is expressed unreservedly: Landscape Staring Back at You (2022). One would tend to attribute determinate meanings to the colors black and red (as we have seen above), but the rich variety of brushstrokes[25], each aimed at rendering leaves of different forms, with the chromatic delight played only in warm tones, attract the eye and direct it with great pleasure from the overall view to the slightest details. 

I conclude this excursus by mentioning many paintings, technically very skilful, that depict huge and bizarre chandeliers[26], all but one[27] rendered in black ink. The subject of light has been treated in the past (I think of works like 'The Bank of Suzhou River, Shanghai, 2016 and Lights 5, 6, 7, 8 from the year 2014) in a very essential way, simplified in the utmost as in Light 8, where a light blue eye containing a black 'pupil' is positioned at the center of a rectangular paper covered in black. The chandeliers of the last years represent a very 'concrete' and very western subject, used by the artist to touch a difficult theme like light and shadow, bright and dark, metaphors of hope and despair.  Even though he uses the habitual instruments (brush, ink, xuan paper), the pictorial result is very different because he creates effects of depth, perspective and even chiaroscuro, obtained with different dilutions of the ink. A work like New York New York (2020) seems to irradiate light: so skilful has the artist been in mastering the different tones of ink[28].

Here darkness no longer dominates, rather it works in the service of light, enhancing it. Beyond full and empty, good and evil, duality can be overcome. This is maybe the key of life.