Review of Artist’s work
Searching for Balance
Virginia Terry Boyd
Wei Dong is IRRESISTABLY attracted to exploring the space that emerges when dominant cultural traditions meet and intermingle. In this space he found his voice as an artist. It emerged from the confluence of his life experience growing to adulthood infused with the ancient traditions of China and career in the vibrant contemporary culture of America. His voice found expression in the medium of painting and his knowledge of both Eastern and Western painting traditions. This opened into a dynamic creative period during which he found a way to express ideas about cultures in stasis and change, and more deeply, toward an approach to life and world-view.
The resolution was belief in a sustainable balance among, the earth, its people and all things in the universe; belief in the possibility of harmony among oppositions and conflict of all kinds, everything in the universe integrally interdependent within a single whole. In the artist’s mind the path to such a condition can be revealed through close study of the small piece of the universe around us that exemplifies such balance and completeness. Through the study of nature, the observer can glimpse the force underlying and unifying all, the life force itself. Nature innately creates a sustainable harmony among all elements within it, even resolving discordances such as the disruptions often emerging from cultures converging.
Evidence of resolution of conflicting forces in nature at the grand scale is present when two powerful rivers converge to become one river. Looking from above, the waters from the two sources at first remain visually distinct, but as the waters move downstream the distinctions dissolve into a new river, a new whole, with a distinct color, clarity or opaqueness, temperature, life forms. At the point of convergence the waters are sometimes turbulent and chaotic as the two bodies of water seek a new state. Blending is hastened by the powerful force of nature they share, the natural gravitational flow of the water that propels the two rivers into a united whole, retaining the essences of its two sources in a new form. For Wei Dong it is at places of dissonance that an energy often springs forth opening space for new insight toward his world-view of a world in balance and sustainable.
Wei Dong’s thinking about the mysterious ability of nature to balance change with constancy became central in his world-view. It led him to focus his artistic attention on looking closely at the natural world immediately around him in order to understand how nature is able to create balance with such dynamic changing elements, and further how to express what he learned on paper. The predictable rhythm of changing seasons, new life in spring moving through the radiance of summer and fall, into winter with cessation of growth and preparation for rebirth, is a vivid example of the innate harmony that accommodates both constancy and change within the universe. Devastating fires, floods, human caused pollution, disease are ever present, but given care, nature will restore balance. Within the boundaries of each painting Wei Dong presents a complete world in balance and harmony.
As his extensive cultural experiences began to meet, and ideas, values and habits brushed together, Wei Dong began to see the world differently, pursuing new ways of seeing and thinking and making. As the painting traditions in East and West intersected in his work, he developed a painting process suitable to express his ideas. He lays down multiple layers of watercolor in abstract patterns, on both sides of the paper. As the layers accumulate images gradually emerge. Combined with crinkling the painted paper to expose cracks and crevices and final brushwork to give detail to the image, the work develops a sense of spatial depth and atmosphere. The paintings are neither Eastern nor Western in style but qualities of both contribute to his process of creating a unified whole from the unpredictable interactions of paper and paint, just as in life, nature creates balance and harmony in a world experiencing profound change.
Our world is rushing toward a global, interdependent entity, a new whole. The multitude of ancient and recent cultural traditions within it, are bumping into each other as globalization presses forward. Like rivers merging, the intersection of cultures and traditions can be initially turbulent and resistant to change, but the direction of the current is determined by nature. The process of movement toward balance may be disorganized and chaotic but the ferment also opens unexpected opportunity for experimentation and innovation as past traditions provide foundations for new harmonies.
Through his painting, Wei Dong provides a way of capturing universal ideas about the powerful force of nature that gives life to our universe and all of the complex, beautiful, terrible interdependent beings and events that exist within it. And his work gives evidence of the power of nature to restore balance in the world if we seek its wisdom and ways.
2016, April, USA
Professor Emerita
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Personal Reflections on Wei Dong’s Journey of Discovery
Sherry Harlacher
When Professor Wei Dong approached me for help editing the English copy he had prepared for this book, I accepted without hesitation. The story of his artistic development is a fascinating and uplifting one. However, it didn’t take very long for me to feel some trepidation about the task. Although I have studied Chinese art history and religious traditions, I do not speak or read Chinese and I worried that my editorial efforts would “miss the mark.” So I ask forgiveness in advance of those readers who can read and understand both the Chinese and English catalog entries. Professor Wei also asked if I would write a short introductory essay for the catalog that would help explain his artistic orientation to English-speaking readers. I felt honored but reminded him that there were many others more qualified than I, those who had mentored him and followed his career both in the United States and in China. Wasn’t there someone better suited? But true to Professor Wei’s own zestful approach to life and art, he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Professor Wei’s is total fearlessness and commitment to trusting the process is refreshing and delightful. However, he didn’t arrive at this outlook without effort. His drive to discover an authentic artistic voice has sustained him ever since he embarked on the disorienting process of immigrating to a new country thousands of miles away from the familiar contours of home. He doesn’t shy away from frankly admitting that he was tempted at first to abandon and efface his identity and there is irony that it took moving to America for him rediscover Chinese literati culture and Daoist philosophy. Both of these traditions form a wellspring that sustains him even now as he ventures into new territory, both as an artist and as a human being.
Classical literati painting traditions strive to capture the essence or spirit of the subject rather than an exact likeness. That process requires not only technical skill and self-discipline, but childlike wonder, intuition and emotional resonance. In his quest for an artistic identity that could reconcile the old and the new, Professor Wei pursued a synthesis of classical Chinese and modern (Chinese and Western) art traditions that would satisfy his curiosity and keep him challenged. Along the way he learned to cultivate a tolerance for ambiguity and a deep acceptance of the dialectical nature of life and art making. Although he is not the first artist, or even the first Chinese artist, to incorporate chance in his art making process---- something that is best illustrated by his method of crumpling a painting and then selectively emphasizing the traces of some wrinkles over others--- Professor Wei essentially remains true to the literati spirit and Daoist ideals that depend on a close observation of nature and the surrender of self to flow.
There is some irony that a career in design studies in America led Professor Dong to rediscover and to fall in love with classical Chinese art and architecture. His quest to integrate graduate studies in art and a teaching career in design offered him a personal roadmap that would help him find his way out of the mist and into clarity, a recurring theme in his paintings. For it was by moving to America and embracing a career as a professor in design studies that he developed his passions: to use painting to develop deeper understanding of Chinese and Western arts and design and to advocate for the preservation of China’s critical tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Rather than allow academic silos, fame, or the marketplace determine his choices, Professor Wei relied on courage and humility to propel himself out of his personal “comfort zone.” His art making and his travels have taught him to value and enjoy the process, an orientation that sustains his curiosity and brings him joy and personal gratification. His enthusiasm is infectious. And his story a wonderful example for all of us who struggle to cope with the frenetic pace of modern life, one that leaves little room for self-reflection and the intentional cultivation of balance and harmony.