Landscape

Abstract

Artist's statement: "My work explores a sense of place, identity, home, and memory. I am attempting to understand the relationship between these four things and my own trans-cultural context. Inspired by the Chinese ink and wash painting, I chose to do a landscape painting to create a place that has meaning to me. The work is composed of 9 wood blocks of landscape painting lining up horizontally, which references the form of the Chinese handscroll. My family likes to drink tea and chat together. To me, tea is not just a symbol of my identity and culture, but also a thing to recall my memory about home. Working with ink, tea leaves, teabag, and fabric, I tried to transfer the idea of value and composition in the Chinese painting into my work. To create a depth in the painting, I did several layers of painting on each block. For some of the blocks, I did ink drawing on the first layer and covered the whole block or part of the block by fabric or teabag to make the landscape looks distant. Above the fabric or teabag, I used tea leaves to drawing solid mountains. For some other blocks, I used tea leaves first and soften the landscape by putting fabric or teabag on top. Moving forward, I think the landscape can be more specific, which should tight closer to my experience."

This is a digital photograph of Shiqi Li's painting. It was submitted as an assignment in the spring 2016 Intermediate/Advanced Painting class taught by Professor Erin Harmon.