Emily in China
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 Image: Temple View Painting, 8ft x 2ft, Emily Ball Dear Visitor With the autumn term coming to an end, and the studio closing its doors for the festive break, we’ve started to look back on some of the highlights that the Seawhite Studio has enjoyed in 2019. In this newsletter, Emily shares her thoughts and reflections on her trip to China in September. It was an amazing opportunity that she seized with both hands. Painting the Chinese landscape was a challenge that she relished and learning more about the Chinese tradition of landscape painting encouraged her to make some interesting connections with her own work, and has had a major impact on her current paintings. How did the trip to China come about? I was emailed by artist Lu Yu an artist and sculptor, and member of the Colchester Arts Society. She was involved with a project with the Nanxi Academy near Wenzhou in China to select 8 British landscape artists to take part in an artist cultural exchange, entitled “When London meets Wenzhou”. I couldn’t quite believe it – an all-expenses paid two week trip to China?! After further communications with Lu Yu, I soon realised that this was a phenomenal opportunity and one that I simply couldn’t miss. So, I cleared my diary and said yes to a big adventure.  What appealed to you about being involved in the exchange? I had never been to that part of the world – so I was wide-eyed and looking forward to seeing experiencing a different culture. I also couldn’t resist the opportunity of two uninterrupted weeks of painting! I wasn’t being asked to teach or give seminars. I was being asked to go as a professional artist: to make paintings in China, to collaborate with Chinese artists and learn more about the fantastic tradition of landscape painting in China. The only requirement asked of me was to donate one of my paintings to the Nanxi academy and provide a further two paintings for an exhibition of British landscape painting as part of the exchange.  Painting donated to Nanxi Academy:Lakeside Reflections (Charcoal and ink on paper) 76.5cm x 55.5cm 2014, Emily Ball What were your first impressions? After a long flight, followed by a long drive in the dark, we arrived at Nanxi Academy at 2am in the rain, so I had no real sense of our surroundings. But when I opened the curtains of my room, it was like revealing a classical Chinese painting: beautiful spiked mountains, encircled by clouds with paddy fields at bottom. And this was just the start. Throughout the trip we were taken to some extraordinary locations from steep mountains and temples, to waterfalls and rivers, all surrounded with lush vegetation. The locations were truly breath-taking and never failed to strike awe and appreciation of nature into my heart.  Photo credit: Zhang Shengbin What approach did you take to painting on location? Early on I realised I didn’t want to make any finished work – it wouldn’t be possible to do that. Due to the itinerary of visiting a large number of different locations, I found myself making small studies, using watercolours and recording my experiences of each place in a diary. I sought to capture the feeling of the place – the beauty, but also the physical discomfort of painting in 38C, with 70% humidity, plenty of bugs biting and flying about and with a continual sense of being filmed. We were always accompanied by photographers, film-makers and often I often found myself painting with a camera peering over my shoulder or a drone camera hovering overhead. It was an extraordinary and strange experience – and one that I wanted to embrace and include in my studies, as it was all part of the experience of being there.  Photo credit: Zhang Shengbin Can you describe the locations and landscapes that you visited? There were two locations that really stood out for me. The first was the view from the top of a huge temple, looking out across a bay which contained lots of little islands. With the tide out, the exposed sand looked as though it had been drawn in by the bamboo poles used for shell fish farming. The bleached light melted the sea and sky and gave me the sense of floating.  Study from temple, Emily Ball The other location that captivated me was a riverbank following a trip along the river on a bamboo raft (!). Having experienced the river from the raft, I really appreciated the jade-coloured water and the towering mountain gorges covered in rich vegetation. It made a deep impression on me and I found it easy to be caught up in the sensory experience of being there. From this location I produced nine watercolour paintings of the river.  Study from the river bank, Emily Ball What inspiration did you draw from your interactions with Chinese landscape painters and the Chinese tradition? The area of China we visited is associated with the origins of Chinese landscape poetry painting and our host Dr. Zhou (founder of the Nanxi Academy) was keen to share and celebrate the huge significance of the Chinese landscape painting tradition with us. He gave us an inspiring tour of his house, which included examples of his own paintings (a fusion of traditional ink painting on rice paper with a beautiful contemporary expressive quality) as well as exquisite silk and scroll paintings. I love the way the landscape is revealed as the scroll is unfolded; there’s such an intricacy and elegance to it. We were also treated to painting demonstrations by paintings masters from the Beijing Academy. They painted with such ease, precision, and energy. It was wonderful to see them painting first hand and I was keen to soak up the atmosphere and apply my own interpretation of that elegant mark-making to my own work.  Photo Credit: Zhang Shengbin Similarly, a trip to a calligraphy museum had a huge impact on me. Rather than individual words, each calligraphic motif is like a little haiku, a poetic description. I loved their expressive marks, their clarity and oddness – a fantastically rich example of mark making!  Photo Credit: Emily Ball As I explored these different painting traditions on the trip I began to make connections between what I was seeing and my own work. The decisive, purposeful mark making resonates for me as well as the composition of the scroll paintings – which have previously inspired my everyday drawings. The trip to China reaffirmed and revitalised this interest!  Day to Day Drawing 2, Charcoal on Paper, 92cm x 183cm, 2004, Emily Ball What impact has the trip had on your work and what happens next? I am thoroughly enjoying working from the collection of studies I made in China. I am currently creating large scale paintings (8ft x 2.5ft) based on the studies I made of the sea and sky from the temple on the coast. I am hoping that some of these will be exhibited in London in October 2020 in an exhibition which will mark the culmination of “When London Meets Wenzhou”.  Photo Credit: Zhang Shengbin The generosity of our hosts was phenomenal and their desire for us to connect with the landscape was heartfelt. At the end of the trip each artist was given a little plot of land at the base of a mountain as a symbolic gift. We named our individual plots and spent time planting some vegetables. The regular updates we receive about our plots since returning to the UK is an another endearing way in which I feel an attachment to the landscape I experienced and the people I met.  Photo credit: Zhang Shengbin On a personal level to have two weeks devoted to new inspiration, time for thinking, painting and writing was such an enriching experience. Whenever you go away somewhere, it gives you space to reflect on what you’re doing with your work. Sometimes it really reinforces what really matters. It's given me inspiration and renewed confidence to paint in an authentic way. Immersing myself in another painting tradition, allowed me to reflect on my own drive and impetus for painting. It made me realise that my creativity is very much about finding a language of paint that helps me understand who I am. “Beneath even the desire to change society and the need to communicate is a need, urgent in some of us, to affirm with our scratches that ‘I exist’.” (Victor Willing)  Photo Credit: Zhang Shengbin |
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