Lili White

THIS work series was featured at a College Art Association Panel in 2004: RETROFITTING: TRADITIONAL EAST ASIAN ART IN CONTEMPORARY PAINTING, chaired by Mernet Larsen; LILI WHITE’s Lecture-Presentation: INVISIBLE ENERGY: ASIAN ART INFLUENCES IN MY WORK stated:
Finding a striped pottery shard in a sage field gave me a visceral shock as I realized another civilization had lived thousands of years ago on the same patch of earth where I was now walking. That our own world would eventually be buried beneath a future one, inspired me to make these works; whose compositions resemble writing from no known language, unless you’d consider calling it a language that belongs to the collective- unconscious. The lines refer to forms of nature...

I adapted this method because it cannot be adjusted nor amended, nor transcribed to another medium (such as printmaking) without losing my original intention: for it to stand alone as witness to my process occurring at a specific moment in time. My compositions present the concept that there is no beginning or end — only change in the field of energy that we all inhabit, perhaps suggesting an endless universe.

They bear relationship to the basis of Chinese painting which was seen as a fundamental philosophy— where precise views of cosmology, human destiny and the relationship between them could be found. The painter/calligrapher sought to attune oneself with the “Chi”, otherwise known as the primordial spirit that created the universe, and becoming inspired, would become a vehicle for the expression of Chi. Brush work conveyed emotional content, tempered by the disciplines of execution. Emotion was seen both in the Chinese landscape and in passages of poems that reflected upon the painter’s state of mind.