Peony 1956

Qi Baishi painted this Peony with ink and color on paper, and what I notice first is the immediate, loose, quality of the washes. There's a real sense of the artist allowing the paint to do its thing, to bloom and spread across the page. It’s so light, yet so direct. Look at how the red petals bleed into the white ground, creating these soft, blurry edges. The brushstrokes are visible, especially in the leaves, where you can see the individual marks of the brush. There's no attempt to hide the process, no overworking. The way Baishi handles the leaves, in a teal blue, almost as an afterthought, makes me think of Matisse and the way he could conjure a world with just a few well-placed marks. There's a real confidence in the way he simplifies the form, trusting the viewer to fill in the gaps. Painting is, after all, an invitation, an ongoing conversation. It's never really finished.