July 21 (Lunar calendar: June 4), 2023 Friday

July 21 (Lunar calendar: June 4), 2023 Friday | Dawnxisoul393art

July 21, 2023

《The Magic Lotus》, painted by dawnxisoul393

Fourth Part: Lotus Painting

The lotus is the national flower of India. Since India is the birthplace of Buddhism, the lotus flower is inextricably linked to Buddhism in India. No matter painting or sculpting Buddha, the Buddha's seat must be a lotus pedestal. Buddhism is solemn and divine, while the lotus is soft and pure, large and fragrant, the lotus flower has become the great auspicious flower of Buddhism. Known as the "Three Western Saints" of the first Amitabha Buddha and the Great Compassion Guanyin Bodhisattva, are also sitting on top of the lotus. The rest of the Bodhisattvas, some holding lotus flowers, some feet on the lotus flower, or lotus flower gestures, fairies to the earth to throw lotus flowers. Temple walls, railings, divine accounts, tables around, incense bags, worship mats, also carved, painted, or embroidered all kinds of lotus patterns. It can be seen how close the relationship between lotus and Buddhism is.

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Qin Shi Huang unified China in 221 B.C., in this great unified empire, lotus culture developed comprehensively and gradually penetrated into various fields such as agriculture, economy, medicine, religion, and art. The Han Dynasty was a period of unprecedented development of Chinese agriculture, which also played an important role in the development of lotus cultivation. Before the Han Dynasty, all Chinese lotus varieties were single-petal type red lotus. By the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the heavy-petal lotus appeared. From the Western Han Dynasty, the rapid development of official and private commerce in China enriched the variety of goods available in various regions and was of great significance to the spread distribution of lotus. Lotus roots and lotus seeds, the specialties of the south of the Yangtze River, entered the north through the very prosperous commercial centers in the south of the river, which fundamentally expanded the distribution area of lotus and made people in the north more aware of lotus and understand it, thus greatly improving the cultivation skills of lotus.

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At that time, the cultivation techniques of lotus in the Central Plains on both the north and south coasts were already quite advanced. During the Western Han Dynasty, the music and songs gradually became popular, resulting in numerous beautiful lotus-collecting songs and ballads, among them are "The Lotus Picking Woman" and "The Lotus Picking Woman at the Lake", in which the singers and dancers took lotus boats and carried lotus flowers, singing and dancing with a strong atmosphere of life, which is one of the most popular traditional folk songs and dances. After the Sui and Tang dynasties, the cultivation skills of lotus were further improved, and the content of lotus cultures such as poems, paintings, sculptures, and crafts about lotus was more colorful. At the same time, lotus has entered private gardens by virtue of its colorful and graceful appearance. The lotus has been used more and more widely and has become a source of inspiration for the creation of arts and craftsmen.

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The lotus is the fastest-changing plant in the growth of everything, every time we go to a lotus pond to paint a lotus, we are actually going to a lotus pond that has changed, and the same lotus in full bloom may be shining when the sun is shining, and it will be in another state when it meets a rainy day. In fact, a flower has time to bloom and a time to decay, which is to make us feel the fickleness of life. The charm of painting is to record every change of the lotus flower that we witnessed in fickle life. In fact, as long as these changes are captured, the lotus under the painting brush will always have vitality and infect our life.

The art of painting is a comprehensive art, and painting lotus can be done from a philosophical point of view, mastering more philosophical theories will bring us in touch with the soul of the lotus in the creative process. In fact, this is true for painting lotus flowers, and it is also true for painting other works. The painting emphasizes that the intention comes before the brush, and you have to understand the various postures and forms of this flower first. In fact, the charm of art is to paint the lotus flower in a thousand different ways, and under the artist's brush, the lotus flower is alive, and painting such work will change our lives. When the lotus flower is past its blooming season, it can shed all its petals overnight and only the nucleus remains, so many people feel that the blooming of the lotus is very rare, capturing and exaggerating the beauty of the lotus has become what many artists are after.

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Art itself cannot be separated from exaggeration, and this work is called "The Magic Lotus", and we used the artistic technique of exaggeration when creating it. In our work, the petals of the lotus are one of the most important elements in the picture, and we exaggeratedly increased the proportion of the petals of the lotus, and we believe that such a lotus allows the viewer to tell at a glance that it is a lotus, but also distinguishes it from the real one. The three lotus fairies in the painting are actually from real-life simple lotus planters in the lotus water villages, all real women from the water villages whom we met during our several years of creating lotus and lotus fairies and who have given us a lot of help and endless inspiration. In the process of creating the Lotus Goddess, we gained a new understanding of life. The lyrical nature of the images, like the poetic impact of the song, slowly pulled our soaring thoughts toward the highest point of creation.

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We devote ourselves to the creation of lotus art without being bound by any artistic shackles, just like seagulls flying freely in the blue sky of art and the space of imagination. Then comes the realm of Zen. We prefer tranquility, indifference and purity, and we are comprehending the realm of Zen. We try to combine the ethereal spirit of Zen, the passion of Confucianism, the transcendence of Taoism, and realism, hoping to produce a new charm of Oriental art. Based on tradition, we are more concerned with freedom, spontaneity, and randomness. Whenever we pick up a brush, a passion rises in our hearts, and colors and music leap onto the paper. The cool autumn scenery and the cool moonlight between heaven and earth will also be projected on the paper.

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When creating paintings of lotus goddesses with lotus ponds as the theme, we first consider the intention of the painting theme repeatedly expressed by our predecessors. We have to have new ideas and thoughts, blend them together, and use new brush strokes and new techniques to express the glory of the lotus, hoping to show the vitality and tenacity of the lotus. The lotus is known as the flower of emotions, some people use the lotus to express their noble sentiments, some use the lotus to tell the bitterness of life and death, and some use the lotus to express their interest in life. In order to make the exploration of the lotus goddess painting get the desired effect, we have carefully thought about the idea, shape, line, and details of the work. Life is the source of art. To create good works, the most important thing is to go deep into life, understand life, and master the characteristics, structure, and laws of the painting objects.

Over the past few years, after careful observation of lotus ponds, lotus leaves, lotus stems, and villagers who grow lotus, we have basically mastered the growth rules of lotus, which makes us not only unrestrained but also more comfortable when painting. When painting the lotus goddess, the outline of the lotus strengthens the sense of movement and momentum of the work. The lotus has a magnificent temperament. The lotus grows out of the silt. Silt is soil mixed with water and it is full of nutrients. There is a lot of moss and grass under the lotus flower, and the light reflection and color relationship is very rich. We think there are many details of lotus that cannot be fully expressed by the realistic painting method. We are always looking for a technique to interpret the lotus pond sentiment in our minds on the screen. It should emphasize the free and natural state of the subject.

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This state is from the heart, from the outside in. It is the spiritual home of inner sublimation. Our lotus painting style is different from painting aesthetics in style and emphasis. Our painting style mostly wishes to write God with form, and painting aesthetics wish to be good at using color, but both wish to have both form and God when dealing with the relationship between form and God and require vividness when expressing shape and artistic conception. In essence, they both come from the long tradition and rich aesthetic concepts of Eastern culture. With the homogeneity of the traditional genes of Eastern painting, it should be said that our painting style also wishes to have the artistic characteristics of realism. Our style is characterized by the subject's subtle observation of objective nature, his subtle understanding of subjective ideas, and his tacit grasp of the intrinsic relationships of natural images.

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It is a very free and flexible form, unrestricted by space and time, pursuing spiritual transcendence and poetic spirit, hoping to conform to the aesthetic connotation of a tranquil, deep, and lyrical spiritual realm. We transform our emotional attachment to the village nun into an attachment to the colors of the lotus pond in all seasons. The lotus pond is infused with the vitality of life, modern movement, and the rhythm of the music. Among the themes of our paintings, lotus is a very stylized one. The world has a long history of painting lotus flowers, and the genres are very diverse. Artists cannot approach something they like without special or personal feelings. Everyone will have their own different style of painting. Due to the different backgrounds, painting styles, and techniques of the painters, as well as their personal thoughts, feelings, and interests, the lotus paintings they create have different artistic charms.

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When we paint lotus leaves, we use thick and light pigments to control the brush and ink, distinguish the main and minor points so that the lotus leaves and flowers change in a regular and rhythmic way. Diversity is unified with the whole, and the lines of the picture are combined with softness and hardness. With bold strokes and colors, as well as the contrast between static and dynamic, the beauty of the lotus flowers, the beauty of the village woman who planted them, is shaped, expressing the existence and upward development of life. Whenever we feel uninspired, we go out into nature, to the lotus pond, to see the lotus leaves washed by the wind and rain. When we paint again, our understanding of life, art and living appear in the colors, consciously or unconsciously. We are infected by the passion and impulse to create and excited to combine our life feelings and subjective passions to fully reveal them.

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Through the sublimation of emotions, the sublimation of art also reaches a higher level, pursuing a more flexible and versatile technical approach. When we were painting, the women from the water villages always came to our mind, and the brush in our hands was of course painted for them. In the masterpiece of classical Chinese literature, Dream of the Red Chamber, the maid Qing Wen becomes a lotus flower fairy after her death, although later critics of Dream of the Red Chamber have argued that this is a tribute to the purity of the book's heroine, Lin Daiyu, in the name of Qing Wen. But in any case, the lotus flower is always associated with female purity. The time goes back a thousand years, but to a legend that seems illusory and real. In the Liaodong Peninsula, at the junction of the Bohai Sea and the Yellow Sea, there was a place called Pulandian, and there was also a water town, in the depths of the water town, there was a lotus flower open luxuriant place, people called it Lotus Lake.

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In the lake lived a lotus fairy who was as beautiful and kind as in our paintings. Lotus Lake people were living a beautiful, peaceful, and warm life under the shelter of the lotus fairy. But these simple and kind people never thought that there was about to happen a shocking catastrophe. In Bohai Bay lived a fierce dragon prince, he heard that the Lotus Lake lived a very beautiful lotus fairy, leading the people there to live a comfortable life, decided to occupy the place, get the lotus fairy, so that the local people listened to him, to work for him. One sunny morning, the people of Lotus Lake as usual here plowing, weaving, raising silkworms, guarding hunting, suddenly southwest, the air dark clouds, wind, sand rolled, a black tornado in the Bohai Sea towards the lotus lake.

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The dragon prince showed a hideous and fierce face, shouting: "Lotus fairy, I want to marry you as a concubine. I want to be king here, you all listen, from now on, all must obey me." The local people have long hated this dragon, they took up arms to fight with him. But how can the simple people fight against the evil dragon? Watching the people continue to fall, the lotus fairy watched all this with infinite pain in her heart, she put on her beloved pink long dress, holding the family's ancestral double-edged sword rushed out of the lake and the dragon launched a fight between life and death. This is an unprecedented battle, the fierce battle between the lotus fairy and the dragon lasted for a hundred days, and everything in heaven and earth felt the earth-shattering battle between good and evil. At the last moment, the lotus fairy once again holding a double-edged sword wielded a flash vision ring, suddenly, a dazzling light in heaven and earth from the Lotus Lake, deep stabbed the dragon's eye, then fast, the lotus fairy once again to make a full-body strength a soaring rush to the dragon, with a sharp sword stabbed his throat.

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The painful dragon tumbling body crashed a mountain next to Lotus Lake to escape back Bohai Bay. Later， people found that the shape of this mountain became like two wheels, and named it Wheel Mountain. After this battle, the water of the beautiful lotus lake dried up and all the lotus flowers gradually gave up. When the sun rose again from the east, the lotus fairy, who was dying of a serious injury, said to the people with her last breath, "I will leave all the lotus seeds here and bury them in the Lotus Lake, so that the future here will be full of bright lotus flowers and people here will see hope again!" The lotus fairy stood on the lake and stretched out her hands, and a glow of energy radiated from the lotus fairy's body to the earth and sky, and all things felt her power. Just then, one after one of crystal clear lotus seeds floating down from the air and fell into the Lotus Lake, while the beautiful lotus fairy slowly flew into the sky ...

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A thousand years have passed, and at the beginning of the last century, a large number of scorching and persevering thousand-year-old ancient lotus seeds were unearthed in the earth of Pulandian, creating another miracle on earth, and the thousand-year-old ancient lotus seeds took root and sprouted, with green leaves and flowers, which is the surreal cultural connotation of the ancient lotus seed myth and legend.

Original by dawnxisoul393,

(One of our spiritual healing thoughts)

Fifth Part: Life Is Beautiful Because of Lotus Flowers

The lotus flowers in summer are very beautiful and charming. In the past, every year this season was our busiest time, visiting the lotus water town and painting lotus flowers. In the past two summers, because of the ravages of the New Coronavirus epidemic and taking care of our daughter who was born just after the epidemic began, we stayed home more often to organize our lotus and lotus nymph (goddess) paintings from the past years. Not long ago, once we passed by a wetland and saw a large lotus flower, we looked at it and became fascinated. We even tilted our heads from time to time and gestured with our hands how to take the most beautiful side of the lotus and paint it. Suddenly, we slowed down, embarrassed by our own infatuation, and all laughed out loud. Indeed, nature is good, beauty is everywhere, and as long as you observe it with your heart, beauty is all around.

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A few days ago, we sent our daughter to the health center for vaccinations, and when we returned, we passed by a home where many lotus flowers were planted in the courtyard pond, some in bloom, some withered, but the green was still in full view because we were rushing back to prepare lunch for our daughter, we could not watch in detail, and we felt a sigh of relief. In the past, we also painted lotus flowers in autumn. We painted them in that season, not when they were in their glory, but when they were at their most desolate. We found that no pedestrians lingered around us while we were painting them, but some of them looked at us curiously, wondering if it was because the lotus was no longer ornamental at this time of the year and was about to rot, and our behavior in painting the lotus at this time made the pedestrians feel incredible.

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We ignored the pedestrians and concentrated on our own business. We kept observing and looking for the right angle to sketch, but every one of them made us think and turned into one story after another that moved our hearts. At that time of the year, most of the lotus flowers in the pond were already in a yellow and wilted state, but we still wandered around them. The remnants of the flowers and leaves, under the sun, were still and motionless, and when the breeze came, the remaining lotus flowers remained still. We understand that in the following time, they will gradually disappear from people's sight and will not become the talk of the day after tea. In fact, those people who once flocked to enjoy the flowers are nowhere to be seen when the lotus flowers are still in full bloom. The beauty is temporary, and so are people.

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Don't we also have a beautiful time in our youth? In those years, because our designs often won awards, we often participated in some activities, especially when the award, always provoke people's curious and sought-after eyes. When we think of our youthful days and our youthful dreams, aren't they as fresh as a lotus flower in its first bloom? No matter from which angle we interpret it, the ideal is sometimes like fireworks, the splendor when it is set off and the darkness when it falls is only a time difference. Here in the south, the lotus flowering period is from June to September every year. When the summer breeze blows, the silent lotus ponds start to bustle, and in just a few days, each lotus pond is occupied by the round and green lotus leaves, and the lotus flowers are graceful in the cascading and rippling green. Each branch of lotus, all with a pink face, is not cluttered and noisy.

After September, the lotus flowers will gradually melt into the water and mud. September is approaching, and now is the last time to enjoy the flowers and paint them. So this opportunity to bring our baby out to paint lotus flowers today, we are especially focused and cherish. The water surface was calm, and the water droplets filled the center of the lotus leaves, which were holding them at ease, not stopping because of the upcoming lotus off-season. Perhaps the weather is too hot, or perhaps also because of the new crown virus epidemic, there are few people and few pedestrians at the lotus pond. For some reason, we were suddenly discussing the famous Song Dynasty poet Zhou Dunyi's "Love the Lotus" today. His famous line, "Out of the sludge and unstained", is widely praised by the world, and is often quoted in historical scriptures by writers and scholars.

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The lotus has always been praised for its noble quality of integrity and honesty, and when rooted in sludge, it can still maintain its natural beauty, not succumbing to the environment, not staining the dirt, and living its life in peace, taking it as it comes, and pursuing perfection. The lotus flower is also widely appreciated because it has treasures all over its body. You see, the lotus root can be eaten and processed into lotus root powder and made into porridge for drinking, which has the effect of detoxifying heat, and the lotus seeds, as well as the rhizome, root nodes, lotus leaves, flowers, and seed germ, can be used as medicine. Over the years, we eat lotus seeds almost every day, mainly by putting them in thin rice, cooked on high heat and smothered on low heat, and eaten after thinning, which is quite effective for health.

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Daniel said that when he was a child, his family also planted lotus, in a small pond, and even in a few large vats. The vats were originally used by previous generations to hold water for consumption or to put food, then there was running water, food is also not stored when needed, go directly to the market to buy, these vats are idle, grandmother used them to grow lotus. When the flowers were in bloom, standing by the pond or by a vat, the lotus flowers were so beautiful that Daniel could hold his breath. Every time he finished his homework, Daniel would stay by the lotus, looking at the flowers and smelling them. After the flowers were gone, the green rosettes grew rapidly, and when the rosettes turned yellow and withered, grandma would cut them down and take the lotus seeds, then pull out three or two fat lotus roots from the bottom of the tank and use them to make soup.

When the lotus flowers are in full bloom, the small pond and the large tank are densely packed with lotus leaves, and the lotus flowers have a long, thin neck sticking out from the gap between the leaves, and the top of the neck holds a lotus leaf with a flower in the center. Because the color of the lotus flowers was not light and not dark, so looked left and right, eyes were not tired. When looking at the lotus flowers, Daniel pondered that the lotus flowers that were open at the top of the pedicels, he just squinted his eyes, he would exercise his imagination, that was little girls, very delicate, very young, very well behaved, more like fairies, graceful ... When Daniel was fully engaged in observing them, he thought to himself, "The Creator is really great to have created such a beautiful plant".

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Daniel's grandma said to him that in the fall, the lotus seeds and the roots would be ready for consumption. But Daniel was depressed when he thought that so many beautiful plants would eventually be turned into food. The grandmother saw Daniel unhappy and told him that the lotus was a treasure, lotus flowers could clear the heart and cool the blood, lotus leaves could clear the summer heat and dampness, lotus roots could benefit the kidneys, and spleen, etc. Seeing that Daniel remained silent, Grandma went on to say that she had put a few lotus seeds into the little pond and the vats, and next year there would be lotus flowers to see again. Daniel listened to this and slowly got relieved.

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We saw the lovely lotus leaves stacked on top of each other, green and emitting a faint lotus fragrance, the gentle and beautiful lotus flowers in full bloom, or budding, tingling with a touching smile, the poetic and picturesque lotus flowers like beauty quietly touched our hearts, the holy and flawless green leaves were like the charming fragrance of a stunning beauty floating around. The dewdrops were dotted, the lotus fragrance was long, the turquoise lotus leaves deeply recalled our yesterday's stories, the immaculate lotus flowers silently prayed for the harmonious family. The countless crystal dewdrops glittering on the lotus leaves resemble the bright stars in the night sky. While the leaves of plants usually have dust on their surfaces, the surface of the lotus leaves, which are seen as a symbol of purity in our Asian culture, is always clean. The lotus has been considered a symbol of purity since ancient times, and its self-cleaning function is known as the "lotus effect".

The surface of the lotus leaf has a layer of velvet and some tiny waxy particles, the water on these tiny nanoparticles will not spread to the surface of the lotus leaf in other directions but form a sphere, which is the dew drops we see rolling on the lotus leaf, these rolling dewdrops will take away the dust on the surface of the leaf, thus cleaning the surface of the leaf. As the dewdrops roll over the lotus leaves, they will roll up all the dust particles and carry them away from the leaves. We love the dewdrops on the leaves of the lotus flower and we praise them. The dewdrops are small and their lives are short, but they are extraordinary. They work silently and pass away silently. We love dewdrops, and in our hearts, they are more precious than pearls, more crystalline than gems, and more brilliant than the stars.

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No matter what time of the year, a pool of elegant white lotus flowers bloomed in our hearts. The pool of water is clear, the fragrant lotus flowers purify the human feelings, and the beauty of the lotus' innocence is experienced in tranquility. As the embodiment of love, the lotus flowers are incomparably noble, each lotus flower foretells a wonderful dream of love, and our life is incomparably beautiful because of the company of ten thousand lotus flowers. Walking on the clean path, silently watching the green leaves of the lotus flowers, our hearts are flooded with joy. Whether we forget the lotus sometimes because we are busy or not, the lotus brings us happy smiles always and lets us know that life is so beautiful. We have walked through countless years of changes, and we deeply understand the meaning of the value of life. We believe that if we have the spirit of green leaves and the soul of lotus flowers, the value of our life will be realized eventually.

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Whether in the city or in the countryside, there are ponds where there are always lotus flowers in the ponds, and the lotus flowers hold our most beautiful feelings. Often, when we start to sketch the lotus flowers at a lotus pond, we want to outline the appearance of lotus flowers， but we find that what jumped into our sight is not only the lotus, but also some ordinary old farmhouses, watchdogs, the lively kittens hiding in the bushes, and with picturesque beauty. We often envy the owners of those houses, although the door eaves are low and the walls are old, but, pushing open the window, there are the ponds full of green lotus leaves to nourish the eyes, and people can fall asleep at night smelling lotus flowers.

The so-called poetic habitat that we dream of is just like this, indeed, life is beautiful because of lotus flowers!

Sixth Part: Autumnal Lotus Thoughts

The lotus is known as the "gentleman of flowers", and in the past generations of literati, most of them did not focus on the edible value of the lotus, but on its beauty. They injected more romantic feelings into the lotus flowers and painted many paintings. A lotus painting by Wang Wen of the Ming Dynasty, the painting is more than 9 meters long and shows the whole life process of the lotus flower from "a small lotus flower showing its tip", to budding, to blooming, and finally drying up. When Doris was a graduate student at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, she studied the paintings of Zhang Daqian, a modern master of lotus painting, and she believes that Zhang Daqian's lotus works inherited and developed the style of Wang Wen's lotus paintings and that Zhang Daqian's lotus paintings are not only beautiful but also full of the soul of the lotus.

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Zhang Daqian's love for lotus is closely related to his character. The lotus flower is regarded as a symbol of noble character, which gives rise to multi-level moral meanings and aesthetics such as elegance, warmth, and seclusion, which coincides with Zhang Daqian's early experience of living in seclusion after becoming a monk and his tenacious personality of not bowing to vulgarity in a troubled world. Zhang Daqian's love of painting lotus flowers is also related to his philosophy of painting, which he considered as the basic skill of using ink and brush to paint lotus. Zhang Daqian not only loved to paint lotus but also loved to grow lotus. At the age of thirty-three, Zhang Daqian began his five-year stay in the Summer Palace in Beijing, where the large lotus flowers in the Summer Palace pond made him increasingly interested in painting lotus flowers. By spending time with the lotus, he was able to capture the characteristics and momentary dynamics of the lotus for a long time with his keen observation and high power of generalization, and then refined and exaggerated them with his own aesthetic sense and artistic interest, making them profoundly meaningful and vibrant.

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Zhang Daqian's works of lotus from his thirties to his sixties were varied and rich in changes. One characteristic of Zhang Daqian's paintings of a lotus during this period was the method of embellishing the petals of lotus flowers with compound strokes. The period from Zhang Daqian's sixties to his eighty-fifth year was the second period of great change in his painting of the lotus. His pioneering art of splashing colors and ink opened up a new realm for painting lotus. During this period, some of Zhang Daqian's lotus paintings were nearly abstract but based on figuration. Therefore, Zhang Daqian's paintings of lotus were free from the restraint of "natural reproduction" and were an expression of his own subjective spirit, surpassing the achievements of his predecessors in both form and mood. Zhang Daqian painted thousands of lotus works during his lifetime, and the lotus flowers under his brush were generous, elegant, and not vulgar.

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The stories in and out of the water, walking and stopping in the tunnel of time and space, were scattered in the traces of history. The koi fishes playing in the water just to listen to the dialogue between lotus flowers and lotus leaves, and the flowers blooming and falling silently, but let the musical geniuses listen to the heavenly music in the clear blue euphoria. The lotus is the fairy of poetry, and the lotus is as lively as a child's leaping of joy when it blooms, the lotus is the confidant of the wind, which opens the lock of its heart and confides in the warmth and coldness of the water, the lotus is the confidant of the rain, which is the only thing that can make the lotus open its noble soul and pluck its heartstrings to perform the clear tones of high mountains and flowing water, however, these days, our hearts are not quiet, Covid-19 has ravaged the world, changing almost all of our past habits and ways of working ...

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Last night, after we bathed our daughter, Daniel was out on the balcony illustrating our latest post. Suddenly, Daniel remembered the small lotus pond in the yard of the house we passed the day we dropped our daughter off at the health center for her routine child checkup and childhood vaccinations. In the light of the full moon (the real full moon should be tonight), there should be another scene. Doris was in the bedroom putting our daughter to sleep, half asleep, humming a lullaby. Not wanting to disturb Doris and our daughter, Daniel left a small message for Doris on the small coffee table in front of the living room couch as he walked out of the house and down the winding path toward the house with the small lotus pond. It was a quiet and remote path, rarely walked during the day, and surprisingly quiet at night. On one side of the path is a mountain, and on the other side of the path are willows and unnamed trees. Last night the moon was bright and Daniel was the only person on the path.

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Daniel said， “When one is under the pale moonlight, it is possible to think about anything or not to think about anything, and just go and enjoy the endless moonlight.” Daniel came outside the courtyard of that house, which was actually an open courtyard without a gate, and the small pond half in the courtyard and half at the roadside and the moonlight made the lotus flowers in the small pond very attractive. There were two occupants of that house who came back from working outside, and they were both old acquaintances of ours, and they were very, very happy to see Daniel and said, "We know you are all lotus lovers, and this year the lotus in this pond is a little late in blooming, and these days the lotus is in full bloom, and we were just about to inform you." The white lotus flowers were dotted among the layers of lotus leaves, like pearls, like stars in the blue sky, and the breeze sent wisps of fragrance. The moonlight was like flowing water, quietly cascading on the lotus leaves and flowers ...

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The leaves and flowers seemed to have been washed in buttermilk and like a dream with a light veil. Although it was nearly a full moon, But there were many pale clouds in the sky that blocked the moonlight, but Daniel thought it was the right time to enjoy the lotus flowers, which had a hazy beauty. The moonlight was shining through the trees, the high clump of shrubs, falling in a jumble of dappled black shadows, the sparse shadows of the curved willows, but also like painted on the lotus leaves. The moonlight in the small pond was not uniform, but light and shadow had a harmonious melody. On all sides of the courtyard, far and near, high and low were trees, and the willows were the most numerous. These trees enclosed the house and the small lotus pond, but even at night he still could recognize the gracefulness of the willows.

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"The most lively nights at this time of year are the sounds of frogs in the water and cicadas in the trees," Daniel says excitedly. Although it is "autumn time" according to the lunar calendar，in fact, the weather is still hot here now. In the heat of the day, what we miss most is the boundless lotus ponds in the water villages. The lotus leaves and lotus flowers in the ponds in the water villages are so delicate and poetic, we would like to be the lotus flowers and lotus leaves, gently swaying in the wind of the water villages, we would like to spend our lives guarding a pool of clear water, just for the holy and frank, pink and turquoise, fresh wind to lift a pool of quiet, see a trace of water over the fading summer season ...

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- The End