A MINDFUL MODE OF STILLNESS
7 years ago
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Thinking and Painting
On September 5, 2007, I was on an Airtrain from West Palm Beach to White Plains around 10 AM. After a vacation, I had a fresh and peaceful mind. I had nothing to do yet, no book to read, no trouble to shoot, no one to miss, no argument to disengage …
My habit started to dictate me, thinking and painting. When I think I’d like to think of patterns. When I paint I’d like to paint what I am thinking.
Out of Box Thinking: Being a foreigner, I could not fit in the box to taste all joys or frustrations on the same wave with others. I realized the gap as soon as I touched down on this large continent North America from Asia on January 20, 1988.
Before I came to US, I had been forced to think and act or react like everyone else as screw nails in a gigantic machine without breaking any rules witch controlled our thoughts and behaviors.
Any disadvantage could be a unique value as advantage. It was a painful change at the beginning to be a stranger with people in America. Out of the box thinking became a natural gift for me - an outsider, in my new life.
I lower my expectations of being “same”, so, that reduced pressures affectively. I gained time and space to focus on the targets I aimed. I don’t react. I don’t need to be sensitive to any perception of being eight good or bad, winner or loser, rabbit or turtle. I don’t even need to be trained as thick-skinned person. But I do care to improve myself by adopting qualities and receiving values that I desire.
Still, I am alert to pattern recognition in imaginations like seeing shining light in the darkness. Still, as screw nails, I perform either leader or follower in large collaboration without showing “me”.
Point of View: I use terms in my own way. Sometimes, I “missed” the point completely but end up with a “new” point of view. Sometimes, I “missed” the point by misusing words, e.g. destruction vs. disruption.
I also realize that my mind has been filled up with two different cultures: Eastern and Western. Sometimes, there is no right or wrong answer, just a different angle of view.
In addition, my mind likes to produce pictures that make my thinking into tripled concurrent processes with Chinese, English, and images. Sometimes, when I answer questions I was embarrassed with people’s shock or confusion. My mind was so busy in sorting out the answers therefore I forgot the audiences totally. Many times, I responded as soon as the first answer pop up no matter it was Chinese, English, or picture.
I am learning English as 2nd language step by step and day by day. At work, my “Chingish” has been already adopted as “extended English”. Thanks for those people around me, who have tolerated my creativities in language for so many years. Many of my co-workers are my English teachers or American culture coachers.
When I was on the AirTran, my mind was filled up with many drafted points as usual. Suddenly all the floating points disappeared but this one – a point of view for three 8s, survived. In Chinese, 8 sounds like ba. Father also sounds like ba.
Point of Departure: My mind continued to travel further from the starting point of 888 and reached a stage with 3 decomposed elements: 8 images, 8 colors, and 8 composition templates.
Many years ago, an American industrial designer his Chinese name is 大富翁） explained me a point of view for art creation. He mentioned a term, point of departure. I couldn’t understand its real meaning at that time.
A while ago, I searched the term via Google and got the answer: the place where something begins, where it springs into being.
The term was still a mystery to me until I finished the whole thinking process for a painting project on that AirTran. I would like to explore visualization with varieties to an extremely limited end within a given condition. Each painting looks same but has uniqueness based on a change pattern. Each painting must be an individual artwork.
The result of this project would reflect our life that is full of unpredictable changes. If we could see the change pattern behind the change surfaces then we could build up a thinking process to adjust us with realistic expectation in each situation.
I started to understand the term, point of departure. 888 was an original point of view from where a painting project was launched with 64 individual artworks into being via a special and unique thinking process.
(to be continued)
My habit started to dictate me, thinking and painting. When I think I’d like to think of patterns. When I paint I’d like to paint what I am thinking.
Out of Box Thinking: Being a foreigner, I could not fit in the box to taste all joys or frustrations on the same wave with others. I realized the gap as soon as I touched down on this large continent North America from Asia on January 20, 1988.
Before I came to US, I had been forced to think and act or react like everyone else as screw nails in a gigantic machine without breaking any rules witch controlled our thoughts and behaviors.
Any disadvantage could be a unique value as advantage. It was a painful change at the beginning to be a stranger with people in America. Out of the box thinking became a natural gift for me - an outsider, in my new life.
I lower my expectations of being “same”, so, that reduced pressures affectively. I gained time and space to focus on the targets I aimed. I don’t react. I don’t need to be sensitive to any perception of being eight good or bad, winner or loser, rabbit or turtle. I don’t even need to be trained as thick-skinned person. But I do care to improve myself by adopting qualities and receiving values that I desire.
Still, I am alert to pattern recognition in imaginations like seeing shining light in the darkness. Still, as screw nails, I perform either leader or follower in large collaboration without showing “me”.
Point of View: I use terms in my own way. Sometimes, I “missed” the point completely but end up with a “new” point of view. Sometimes, I “missed” the point by misusing words, e.g. destruction vs. disruption.
I also realize that my mind has been filled up with two different cultures: Eastern and Western. Sometimes, there is no right or wrong answer, just a different angle of view.
In addition, my mind likes to produce pictures that make my thinking into tripled concurrent processes with Chinese, English, and images. Sometimes, when I answer questions I was embarrassed with people’s shock or confusion. My mind was so busy in sorting out the answers therefore I forgot the audiences totally. Many times, I responded as soon as the first answer pop up no matter it was Chinese, English, or picture.
I am learning English as 2nd language step by step and day by day. At work, my “Chingish” has been already adopted as “extended English”. Thanks for those people around me, who have tolerated my creativities in language for so many years. Many of my co-workers are my English teachers or American culture coachers.
When I was on the AirTran, my mind was filled up with many drafted points as usual. Suddenly all the floating points disappeared but this one – a point of view for three 8s, survived. In Chinese, 8 sounds like ba. Father also sounds like ba.
Point of Departure: My mind continued to travel further from the starting point of 888 and reached a stage with 3 decomposed elements: 8 images, 8 colors, and 8 composition templates.
Many years ago, an American industrial designer his Chinese name is 大富翁） explained me a point of view for art creation. He mentioned a term, point of departure. I couldn’t understand its real meaning at that time.
A while ago, I searched the term via Google and got the answer: the place where something begins, where it springs into being.
The term was still a mystery to me until I finished the whole thinking process for a painting project on that AirTran. I would like to explore visualization with varieties to an extremely limited end within a given condition. Each painting looks same but has uniqueness based on a change pattern. Each painting must be an individual artwork.
The result of this project would reflect our life that is full of unpredictable changes. If we could see the change pattern behind the change surfaces then we could build up a thinking process to adjust us with realistic expectation in each situation.
I started to understand the term, point of departure. 888 was an original point of view from where a painting project was launched with 64 individual artworks into being via a special and unique thinking process.
(to be continued)
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Da Hua Lian Array 01
Da Hua Lian Array 01 乾Even Chinese people think that I Ching or Yi Jing (易经) is very difficult to understand because it is too abstract and abstruse.
Actually, when you see the pattern, it would be easy to follow. If you see six solid line like this icon, then you will remember Hexagram 1 - named 乾 (qián). Its inner (lower) trigram is (乾 qián) force = (天) heaven, and its outer (upper) trigram is the same. 3 lines (trigram) x 2 = 6 lines (hexagram).
Life is a journey with full of unpredictable changes. A man or a woman, a family, a project team, a company, a community, and a country need leadership. We all desire for a peaceful, reliable, enjoyable, and successful life. I Ching or Yi Jing (易经) is guidance to solve problems via recognition of change patterns. This set of wisdoms could help one who is struggling in various problems.
In I Ching or Yi Jing (易经), the power of leadership is called Heaven; the leader is called Dragon. There are four fundamental qualities that compose a leadership: maker (元，yuan), pervasive (亨，heng), bountiful（利，li）, pure (贞，zhen). A leader must have original creativity or initiative drive to make things happen. A leader must be wise with vision in order to foresee successes. A leader must know how to take optimized solutions based on right time and right position with right people skills to achieve desired results via maximized collaboration with minimum costs or damages. A leader must keep integrity in purity, striving for firmness of character.
It is critical that a leader must also take right action in each of the six stages defined in the first hexagram. I painted six partial faces - Da Hua Lian to wysiwyg the hexagram. Read the hexagram from the lowest line first .
1st line (初九，1st 9)
Change at the beginning means:
A hidden or sunken dragon.
Do not act.
2nd line (九二，2nd 9)
Change in the second place means:
Seeing a dragon in the field.
Gain by seeing a great person.
3rd line (九三，3rd 9)
Change in the third place means:
All day long the superior man is creatively active.
At nightfall he keeps alert to peril and says without fault.
If you are in a leader position but you do not have this experience then you are not a leader. If you do have both position and experience but says wrong then you’d better to quit. A bad leader could make situation worse than no leadership. It is very hard for a parent who says wrong but could not quit and would not see things differently neither. Is this related to someone you know, or we all know?
4th line (九四，4th 9)
Change in the fourth place means:
Someone may leap from deep depths, and wavering flight over others, but be without fault.
5th line (九五，5th 9)
Change in the fifth place means:
A flying dragon in the heavens.
Gain by seeing a great person.
This line in Chinese is 九五之尊 , means the highest stage of success.
6th line (上九，Top 9)
Change at the top means:
A arrogant and haughty dragon
will have regrets.
The above 6 faces illustrate the specific changing stages within a cycle of evolution. In addition, I painted two more faces in each array: one represents previous hexagram and the other represents next one since I Ching or Yi Jing (易经) also called Zhou Yi (周易).
The face represents the previous one - Hexagram 64 (未济，Wei Ji), which will be the last painting.
The face represents the next one - Hexagram 2 (坤，Kun), which will be the next blog.Zhou (周) means cycle or rotation. Yi (易) means change. Each hexagram is a part of 64 rotated positions within a bigger evolution. The rotation is all based on binary math model. You could get more details by googling I Ching. A hexagram represents a specific change pattern that is caused by a result from its previous hexagram/change pattern therefore its own result will be a root to form up a new change, good or bad.
The following diagram shows three related hexagram evolved in this painting.
In any significant undertaking, the best scenario is letting all leaders perform their maximum powers in a harmony of collaboration. This stage would be an environment of multiple 九五之尊 – a collection of highest successes. This desired stage called 用九- utilize all that is also defined in Hexagram 1, 乾 (qián).
I was shocked when I read this piece of mind set captured in the ancient hexagram from those who were 5000+ years older than us.
I was shocked when I read this piece of mind set captured in the ancient hexagram from those who were 5000+ years older than us.
Why we have to reinvent the wheel? - called new marketing force, new leadership, new organizational behavior, new strategies for globalization, and new so on?
All Lines (用九，Utilize/Enpower All)
When all the lines Change, it means:
There appears a flight of dragons without leaders.
Good fortune.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
What made me for this long journey?
Da Hua Lian Project is a long journey. It started in Sept 2007 and maybe it will completed by Sept 2012. Originally, I kept this project as a private journey until I had a conversation with a man three days ago. I decided to post my project via a blog to share what I have learned from the root of Chinese culture - I Ching or Yi Jing (易经).
Who I am: I was born in 1953 in China. I grew up in a specific time in which I had no opportunity to learn or appreciate the beauty of our traditional culture. I did not have formal fine art training or any other education from age 13 to 25. After I came to US in 1988, I became a computer programmer and did not have time in reading Chinese.
I always ask myself, why my thinking is based on binary math model. If there are three variables I naturally produce eight scenarios to cover all test cases in coding.
I remember in a class of advanced data structure in 1990, a teacher said no one was right in solving one problem. The teacher started to analyze the problem in depth and covered the whole blackboard with white chalk notes. Suddenly, he stopped for a while, and then erased all notes from the blackboard. He turned to us and said, Hong Yang’s answer is correct. I was shocked and wondered where the thinking power came from. I belong to the “Lost Generation” who missed 10 years of normal education during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1977. I still keep that homework notebook in a box.
This mind processing influences me in painting.
Art in a none artist's mind: As self-taught painter, I might be a complete nut who does the artwork differently with many violations which breaks all rules in fine art. However, I enjoyed the journey with full passionate feelings because the whole painting process of this series was like a decoding of Chinese culture. During the journey of painting, I touched Chinese culture DNA code by code.
I started the first painting – Qian Gua (乾卦) on July 20, 2008, 10 months after the design completed. By August 30, 2009, 14 paintings will be finished in 13 months. I plan to complete this series of 64 paintings by September 2012. The whole journey from an idea to the end would be about five years.
Although I did not have much time to paint each day, I did what I could with the amount of time available. Sometimes, I was happy just to complete a tiny component. I enjoyed every minute spent in learning my own culture step by step. I kept a diary of this journey.
Along with this special journey at home in my limited spare moonlight time, at work I led a project team accomplished a huge IT project to migrate legacy utility billing systems from mainframe to SAP CCS. I had worked at least 14 hours per day during the whole project in 16 months. I always woke up in mid of the night with solutions to problems. I took quick notes on a notepad near the pillow. Many of the solutions are Chinese notations from I Ching or Yi Jing (易经).
Old sayings in nowadays: Thanks to those ancestors who created a powerful thinking process based on a binary mathematical model called Yin and Yang (in the contemporary world, it is called 0 and 1).
From I Ching or Yi Jing (易经) I learned that it is quite normal to be surrounded with various unknown changing forces therefore we should assess the change patterns in order to adopt or create positive positions without frustrations or insecure feelings. When unpredictable changes become variables to a predictable thinking process then there are no unpredictable fears in any changes.
The predictable thinking process is the way fully defined in I Ching or Yi Jing (易经). I realized that I had been influenced by I Ching or Yi Jing (易经) via reading Chinese classic novels and history books which had made me quite different from people in this part of world even before I entered here from the far east.
Planting seeds for dreams: The reason why I picked up Da Hua Lian as the visualized image notation in my painting is because my grandma was a fan of Peking Opera. I was influenced from my grandma who lived with me in same bedroom for years in the 60s.
Without knowing the seeds were planted deeply in my soul I would not be happy with those bothersome images around me all the time. It was very often that I had dreams of those floating and mixed painted faces – Da Hua Lian. WYSIWYG (pronounced wiziwig), is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. You will WYSIWYG my dreams when you see the paintings.
Curiosity and un-erased images are composed of my artwork. The artwork to me is not just illustrating the images in a certain way but show the way of thinking (the virtual notation) by using those vicious notation. It might be a long lonely journey I initiated and fulfilled, but very interesting and full of enjoyment.
I would like to share 64 paintings of Da Hua Lian Array 《大花脸阵》and my diary to the world via my blog. This journey help me to be a fulfilled individual via the benefit from a timeless, superior, and valuable philosophy and beautiful human mind set - I Ching or Yi Jing (易经).
Who I am: I was born in 1953 in China. I grew up in a specific time in which I had no opportunity to learn or appreciate the beauty of our traditional culture. I did not have formal fine art training or any other education from age 13 to 25. After I came to US in 1988, I became a computer programmer and did not have time in reading Chinese.
I always ask myself, why my thinking is based on binary math model. If there are three variables I naturally produce eight scenarios to cover all test cases in coding.
I remember in a class of advanced data structure in 1990, a teacher said no one was right in solving one problem. The teacher started to analyze the problem in depth and covered the whole blackboard with white chalk notes. Suddenly, he stopped for a while, and then erased all notes from the blackboard. He turned to us and said, Hong Yang’s answer is correct. I was shocked and wondered where the thinking power came from. I belong to the “Lost Generation” who missed 10 years of normal education during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1977. I still keep that homework notebook in a box.
This mind processing influences me in painting.
Art in a none artist's mind: As self-taught painter, I might be a complete nut who does the artwork differently with many violations which breaks all rules in fine art. However, I enjoyed the journey with full passionate feelings because the whole painting process of this series was like a decoding of Chinese culture. During the journey of painting, I touched Chinese culture DNA code by code.
I started the first painting – Qian Gua (乾卦) on July 20, 2008, 10 months after the design completed. By August 30, 2009, 14 paintings will be finished in 13 months. I plan to complete this series of 64 paintings by September 2012. The whole journey from an idea to the end would be about five years.
Although I did not have much time to paint each day, I did what I could with the amount of time available. Sometimes, I was happy just to complete a tiny component. I enjoyed every minute spent in learning my own culture step by step. I kept a diary of this journey.
Along with this special journey at home in my limited spare moonlight time, at work I led a project team accomplished a huge IT project to migrate legacy utility billing systems from mainframe to SAP CCS. I had worked at least 14 hours per day during the whole project in 16 months. I always woke up in mid of the night with solutions to problems. I took quick notes on a notepad near the pillow. Many of the solutions are Chinese notations from I Ching or Yi Jing (易经).
Old sayings in nowadays: Thanks to those ancestors who created a powerful thinking process based on a binary mathematical model called Yin and Yang (in the contemporary world, it is called 0 and 1).
From I Ching or Yi Jing (易经) I learned that it is quite normal to be surrounded with various unknown changing forces therefore we should assess the change patterns in order to adopt or create positive positions without frustrations or insecure feelings. When unpredictable changes become variables to a predictable thinking process then there are no unpredictable fears in any changes.
The predictable thinking process is the way fully defined in I Ching or Yi Jing (易经). I realized that I had been influenced by I Ching or Yi Jing (易经) via reading Chinese classic novels and history books which had made me quite different from people in this part of world even before I entered here from the far east.
Planting seeds for dreams: The reason why I picked up Da Hua Lian as the visualized image notation in my painting is because my grandma was a fan of Peking Opera. I was influenced from my grandma who lived with me in same bedroom for years in the 60s.
Without knowing the seeds were planted deeply in my soul I would not be happy with those bothersome images around me all the time. It was very often that I had dreams of those floating and mixed painted faces – Da Hua Lian. WYSIWYG (pronounced wiziwig), is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. You will WYSIWYG my dreams when you see the paintings.
Curiosity and un-erased images are composed of my artwork. The artwork to me is not just illustrating the images in a certain way but show the way of thinking (the virtual notation) by using those vicious notation. It might be a long lonely journey I initiated and fulfilled, but very interesting and full of enjoyment.
I would like to share 64 paintings of Da Hua Lian Array 《大花脸阵》and my diary to the world via my blog. This journey help me to be a fulfilled individual via the benefit from a timeless, superior, and valuable philosophy and beautiful human mind set - I Ching or Yi Jing (易经).
Friday, August 28, 2009
Da Hua Lian Project Introduction
Da Hua Lian Array《大花脸阵》, a series of 64 pastel artworks, is to represent two Chinese cultural notations: Da-Hua-Lan (大花脸) and I Ching or Yi Jing (易经).
Da-Hua-Lan (大花脸) is visual notation - male role with colorful painted face in Peking Opera. I Ching or Yi Jing (易经) is virtuous notation – the DNA of Chinese culture . 5000 years ago, by observing Mother Nature ancient Chinese created a virtues system to keep balance in various changes.
In this series, each of 8 partial painted faces in a painting as visual notation carries a specific doctrine from I Ching or Yi Jing (易经) as virtue notation.
When I was little, like many kids I had a habit of drawing symbols subconsciously with a stone, a stake, or a chalk on ground, wallboard, papers and etc. This specific set of symbols flowed out from my mind via a pen to a notepad while I had nothing to do on a plane from West Palm Beach to White Plains on September 5, 2007. The thought drifted into 8 "arrays" with a series of 8 "elements". I love thinking and painting/coding in patterns.
After I got home, I put those drifted floating thought into a high level design or called architecture in software engineering. I created 8 “elements” by using my favorite Chinese art notation – Da-Hua-Lan (大花脸). Then I created 8 “frameworks” (or called drawings) based on the 8 “arrays” captured on my notepad as basic templates. I selected 8 colors (black, dark gray, light gray, white, red, green, yellow, and blue) for implementation (or painting). In addition, the classic change patterns - 易阵 sounds like YI Zhen (the 64 change patterns organized in either array or circle format) were adopted in the design.
Each painting would embed a figure – ancient symbol of six horizontal lines called Gua (卦) as well as Hexagram in English. Three stone stamps with two types of specific Chinese traditional ink, red and dark red, would be utilized in each painting include the series’ title stamp -大花脸阵 in dark red ink, my private collection stamp –杨泓藏 in red ink, and my penname stamp –木水作 in red ink.
Da-Hua-Lan (大花脸) is visual notation - male role with colorful painted face in Peking Opera. I Ching or Yi Jing (易经) is virtuous notation – the DNA of Chinese culture . 5000 years ago, by observing Mother Nature ancient Chinese created a virtues system to keep balance in various changes.
In this series, each of 8 partial painted faces in a painting as visual notation carries a specific doctrine from I Ching or Yi Jing (易经) as virtue notation.
When I was little, like many kids I had a habit of drawing symbols subconsciously with a stone, a stake, or a chalk on ground, wallboard, papers and etc. This specific set of symbols flowed out from my mind via a pen to a notepad while I had nothing to do on a plane from West Palm Beach to White Plains on September 5, 2007. The thought drifted into 8 "arrays" with a series of 8 "elements". I love thinking and painting/coding in patterns.
After I got home, I put those drifted floating thought into a high level design or called architecture in software engineering. I created 8 “elements” by using my favorite Chinese art notation – Da-Hua-Lan (大花脸). Then I created 8 “frameworks” (or called drawings) based on the 8 “arrays” captured on my notepad as basic templates. I selected 8 colors (black, dark gray, light gray, white, red, green, yellow, and blue) for implementation (or painting). In addition, the classic change patterns - 易阵 sounds like YI Zhen (the 64 change patterns organized in either array or circle format) were adopted in the design.
Each painting would embed a figure – ancient symbol of six horizontal lines called Gua (卦) as well as Hexagram in English. Three stone stamps with two types of specific Chinese traditional ink, red and dark red, would be utilized in each painting include the series’ title stamp -大花脸阵 in dark red ink, my private collection stamp –杨泓藏 in red ink, and my penname stamp –木水作 in red ink.
Da Hua Lian Project Overview
Updated by 12/08/2010
Artist: Hong Yang (杨泓) Pen Name: Mushui (木水)
Target Due Date: September 5, 2012
Status: Design completed; Painting #1- #26 completed, 38to go
Project Title: Da Hua Lian Array 《大花脸易阵》
Objective: Creation of a series of 64 (16.5 in x 12.5 in) abstract pastel paintingsArtist: Hong Yang (杨泓) Pen Name: Mushui (木水)
Start Date: September 5, 2007
Target Due Date: September 5, 2012
Status: Design completed; Painting #1- #26 completed, 38to go
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