Butterfly lovers

I'm on the home stretch in creating silk paintings for a show at the Vashon Tea Shop in February! I've done 6 or 7 large pieces (up to 21" x 38") and three small ones (10"x10"). Now comes the challenge of framing and photographing them professionally--within my budget!

This image, the Butterfly Lovers, is from a very famous Chinese love story.

Here is the story:

Butterfly Lovers

There was a wealthy family who had only one child, a girl, whom they loved very much. The girl loved learning, and longed to go to school. Only boys went to school in China in those days. “I will dress as a boy, and no one will know,” she pleaded. Finally, she persuaded her parents to let her go to school.

She loved school, and made many friends. She had one friend in particular. They were soul mates. They met everyday on the bridge to discuss philosophy or the poets, but the young man never knew she was really a young woman. She fell in love with him.

When school was over at last, and it was time to part, she invited him to come visit her family home. Still, she did not let on that she was not a young man herself.

The young man was poor, and so he did not come to visit for a long time, and in fact, he fell ill and died before he could come visit. Her parents, in the meantime, betrothed her to someone else. When time came for her wedding, she traveled to the home of her husband-to-be in a red carriage. The wedding procession passed by the graveyard where the young man was buried. As they passed by, the young man’s grave opened. The girl jumped out of the carriage and into the grave. Out of the grave flew two butterflies; the lovers were together at last, as butterflies.

Xiao Ning told me this story when we visited Hangzhou. She pointed out the bridge where they were said to have met and talked so frequently.

This is a famous story in China; there are many plays and movies with this theme—I even saw it on television! A friend who teaches in China says that his college students love the story. Personally, I hate it. To me it seems like a warning not to let your daughters go to school, a story to keep women down!

Hundred family coat and lovers in the moonllight

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

The Hundred Family Coat

I finally have two images on silk which I am nearly satisfied with!

Here is Boachu with the golden phoenix wearing the hundred family coat, the coat made from pieces of clothing from the people of a hundred households in the village. He has just climbed out of the river the demons froze. The Hundred family coat kept him and the golden phoenix warm. Now he is at a fork in the road. The right hand one is paved and leads--apparently--to a warm friendly village. The other is narrow and rough and leads into the mountains. Which will he chose?

The other image is the lovers Shiwa and Humei, walking by West Lake in Hangzhou in the moonlight. Their story is coming.

Boachu and Golden Phoenix Rescue the Sun

Boachu and Golden

 Phoenix

Rescue the Sun

            This image is from a Chinese story of how the sun was rescued. It seems that the sun went missing, and it was always dark. One man set out to find the sun, but he perished in the process. His son, Boachu, then went, accompanied by a golden phoenix.

            They had many adventures on the way. In one village, the people wanted to help Boachu, but they were very poor. Each household donated a small piece of their own clothing, which they made into a coat, the Hundred Family Coat. Another village had only dirt to give Boachu, so he filled his pockets with dirt.

            Boachu and the phoenix climbed many mountains, forded many rivers. Demons froze over one river, but the hundred family coat kept them warm. At one point, they came to a fork in the path. An old woman told them they should take the path to the right, and they would find a warm welcome, food and shelter.

Boachu started to follow the old woman, but the phoenix hit him with her wing to let him know that was the wrong way. Boachu ignored her, and followed the path to the village, where he did indeed find a warm welcome and lots of good food. But as he was about to take a bite, the phoenix dropped a shoe in his soup. Boachu saw that it was his father’s shoe, and he realized that these were demons and that they had killed his father.

            Boachu and the phoenix escaped and continued on. At last they came to the sea. Then  Boachu threw the dirt from his pocket into the water, and the dirt became islands so that they could cross the sea to where a Sea Dragon King had imprisoned the sun.

            Boachu fought the sea dragon until he defeated him then began pushing the sun up to the surface. But Boachu had no more energy and died. The Phoenix finished pushing up the sun, until at last the sun was free and could shine on everyone again.                  the end

couple in the moonlight

This one is a bit rough. It's a smaller, test version of an image I am doing from the story of Humei and Shiwa, lovers who turned into birds.  I haven't even steamed it and washed out the resist yet.

I've been thinking about stories, about why I am doing these images  from Chinese stories. I think it is because the stories explain to me something about Chinese thought, and they touch our own needs. All stories are teaching stories, often speaking to a part of us that has no words, even when we are not conscious of the lesson.  Some stories are born of our adolescence and teach concepts we may outgrow as we grow wiser. I'm thinking of the many many stories, movies, shows, etc, in western culture where the hero wins by might. Might makes right. Conflicts are solved with a gun or a fist. 

These stories have always troubled me, and I have wanted to counter them. The images I chose to illustrate are places where these Chinese stories speak to me, and I believe they may speak to others as well.  

Silk painting update

Nov 23 --The black resist holds a fairly good line, as does the gold; I am still having trouble with the clear. It doesn't come out evenly, and it spreads so that the line you see when it first lays on the fabric gets much wider. In this case it picked up the marker on the line drawing below the silk. 

Nov 30--The black and gold resists looked good--but they did not hold up as resists at all! They worked well on two previous pieces, but when I applied dye on this one, it went right through the line!! The gold bird now has splotches of red and green, and the dark blue of the "Hundred Family Coat" bled right through into the fields and pathway the boy is standing on! The only thing I can figure is that it was cooler the day I put it on, and that meant the resist didn't go through the cloth but sat on top. I am using a heavy silk....can't remember the name right off...19 mm wieght...but it is the same weight cloth I used for the previous pieces. 

Images for Chinese folk tales series

When I told a Chinese friend I was doing a series of paintings based on stories I learned while visiting in China, she asked if I was going to do the illustrations in Chinese style. I told her no, I am not Chinese. I can only do the illustrations as I see them through my own western eyes. My purpose is to share my experience of China through my silk painting, not to copy Chinese art. 

Here is the line drawing for Peacock Princess, a famous story of the Dai people in Yunnan Province in Southern China. I saw this story, which came originally from India,  celebrated through dance and illustrated in stone at Xishuanbanna forest preserve just outside of Jinghong. In this scene, her husband the prince has been falsely reported killed, and the kings advisor has accused her of being a witch, saying she must die. The princess says with her husband dead, she does not want to live anyway, and asks to perform one last dance with her peacock cloak. With her cloak on, she can fly, and flies away home to her father the sun.

silk painting update

Still exploring different resists and dyes, looking for the best match for the series I have in mind. 

This image is one I have been trying to express in several different media: watercolor, monoprint, colored pencil, and now silk serti painting. You can see how the resist did not hold up on the trees in the front left. I tried to fix this by painting a resist onto the silk and painting with dye on top of the resist. Not very successful, I think.