Free rein to imagination

As WJ can attest to, words can run out, but not imagination at work.

Compatibility

Luxuriance

Swimming in even number

Footprints

My Mom was looking for the complete version of this particular poem, remembering only bits and pieces. However, with the help of Internet, specifically, Google Search using some Chinese characters (actually they turned out to be the title of the poem), we found it, penned by the famous Chinese poet of the Sung Dynasty, Su DongPo. And this is for her, using my late father's calligraphy brush.

Together

In a flurry

Turning Over a New Leaf

And the Chinese calligraphy session with the well-seasoned old brush continues ...

Learn from mistakes so as not to repeat them.

Diligence

Another piece taken from my late father's calligraphy collection and get this, this particular calligraphy guidebook was published in HongKong in 1974 and sold for HK$1.60 (and if my memory serves me right, it was M$0.80 after conversion). Things have changed a lot since that year when I was just out of high school and had just begun my life-long vocation of teaching as a wide-eyed trainee at a rural Chinese school accessible via an earth road, sometimes riding piggyback on my colleague's scooter. Those were the days when life was simple, with me molding the malleable minds of young students who were thrust into society at a tender age to help their parents in eking out a livelihood in the austere rubber estate setting.

The cover of the guidebook, truncated at the top portion for space from the splendidly elegant original look, appears to the right.

Old Brush, New Calligraphy

On a recent trip back to Malaysia, I picked up some of my late Father's Chinese calligraphy paraphernalia: Chinese brushes, calligraphy guidebooks and collections. I enjoy using his well-seasoned brush, and wrote the following small form Chinese calligraphy piece entitled "Setting Goals" taken from his collections.

It's great to be back ...

Elegance

Shall we dance?

Unified Flight

Posturing

Bashful

This painting of cranes, and several before this, are patterned after Ke-Chi Chang's compendium of Gong Pi (elaborate style) Chinese brush painting entitled "Birds Singing & Flowers Radiating Fragrance" (2002, second edition, Art Book Co., Taiwan). He was a student of Mr. Chung-Lin Yu, an icon of Chinese brush painting whose paintings have given me countless hours of pleasure in admiring and learning Chinese brush painting of birds and flowers.

Deliberation

Let's Sing Along