Mending fences through art: Ink paintings from China at the Met

Budding flowers in springtime giving hope to a fresh, beautiful start. Bamboo stalks swaying in the breeze, sending nostalgia of the calm, carefree life in the countryside. Water raging from the top of the mountains like the surge of emotions of a passionate lover, mountains and cliffs covered with trees and moss evoking the mysteries of nature these are just some of the themes of the ink paintings of esteemed Chinese artists Chen Lyusheng and Sun Jiangtao.

Chinese ink painting focuses on the concept, the feeling. So, its not just like you draw something and make it similar to the real object. It focuses on the peoples feelings, its what you can see, what you can get, after seeing these pictures, Lyusheng, through an interpreter, told GMA News Online.

And capturing the feelings through painting is one of the things that Filipino and Chinese artists have in common, said National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) chairman Felipe De Leon Jr. during the opening of the exhibit titled Ink Paintings from China: Chen Lyusheng and Sun Jiangtao at the Metropolitan Museum on June 19.

Im very happy that Chinese art has very close realities to Philippine art. Both conditions do not simply copy what is seen by the eyes, because the Chinese and Filipino artists capture what we know rather than what we see, De Leon said in a speech.

Chinese artists capture the essence of things. They capture the soul of the mountains, of a tree, a river. This is also true for Filipino paintings, he added.

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Mending fences through art: Ink paintings from China at the Met