“Tutored by my art” is how Friar Laurence, the herbalist in Romeo and Juliet who compounds a sleeping potion for Juliet, describes his pharmaceutical credentials.  In the past few days of editing my chapter on life lessons taught in that play, that phrase has leapt from the page to chime with other activities of the week.  I remember from my earlier life the phenomenon of being so immersed in rehearsing a play that no matter what else was going on, everything seemed a reference to, an aspect of the play I was preparing.  Of course, the richness of any Shakespearean text almost guarantees relatable correspondences of all sorts, and every fresh encounter with a play by Shakespeare, reading or seeing, reveals something new:  the play doesn’t change, but we do, so we recognize things in it we did not before.

So, it’s not surprising that Friar Laurence’s phrase has me thinking about my mid-week experience in a five-hour Chinese ink painting workshop at the Barn Gallery in Ogunquit, Maine, the first time in decades I’ve had an artist’s brush in my hand, and the first time ever I’ve had the pleasure of being taught by my good friend, accomplished artist and educator Shiao-Ping Wang.  Earlier this year, I’d been mesmerized by her show at the Buoy Gallery in Kittery, Maine (see Jorge Arango’s illustrated review at https://www.pressherald.com/2022/01/02/art-review-abstract-art-allowed-shiao-ping-wang-to-break-free-from-confines-of-identity/ ), so when another dear friend, artist and former UNH colleague Carol Aronson Shore, invited me to go with her to Shiao-Ping’s workshop, I immediately agreed.

A perk of accompanying Carol was her sharing with me her impressive collection of brushes, inksticks, brush stand, and large, decoratively carved inkstone, the mortar for grinding and containing ink, all acquired during her visit to China years earlier, but never before this occasion put to use.  Shiao-Ping provided a variety of papers, each with its own qualities:  Maobian, the yellowish practice paper, smooth and semi-absorbent; Xuan, white and soft, showing subtle ink gradations; and Mulberry, less absorbent and good for layered and opaque technique.

Brushes for ink painting compose a complete menagerie:  white, soft goat brushes; brown, firmer weasel brushes; mountain horse hair brushes mixed with badger, very rough in texture for irregular and expressive effects.  Apparently even the location of the hair on the donor animal is a factor:  Shiao-Ping alluded to one brush’s having “belly hair.” Such natural and transparent sourcing really appeals to me.

The materials of this art are themselves beautiful, and Shiao-Ping’s easy, self-effacing eloquence in describing not only techniques but the long tradition behind their evolution were as engaging as her demonstrations.  Her instruction, I gather, followed a pragmatic and traditional sequence:  first grinding the ink and then practicing initial strokes, leading to practicing making the Chinese character or logogram for “tree,” and then copying—or attempting to copy—renderings of first bamboo leaves, then bamboo culms and nodes, then rocks, then landscapes.

All of this was completely absorbing and, because absorbing, refreshing.  It’s rare that for so extended a period I’ve focused exclusively on completing a single, simple, repetitive task.  The few occasions where a stroke produced the desired effect seemed magical, as if the brush itself, not me guiding it, did the deed.  I recalled how when learning to ride, I often found that in the last few minutes of a lesson, by which time I had sweated through my habit, my near-exhaustion finally produced the relaxed command of my mount that allowed us to communicate effectively.  Less is more.

This day of discovering ink painting—tutored by art–was intriguing, reassuring, and restorative, a tonic vacation from the keyboard at which I now sit, typing away.  Such hands-on creativity I highly recommend to any novice with access to so gifted a teacher as Shiao-Ping Wang.