dream state

Known primarily for his landscape scrolls and his “one-corner” asymmetrical compositions where the actual subjects of the works are pushed to a corner or a side leaving the other part of the painting empty, here Song Dynasty artist Ma Yuan 馬遠 (c. /马远, 1160–1225 ) chose water as a topic for painting. He made “二十水圖 Twelve Studies of Water” (now held at the Beijing Palace Museum) in which he contemplated and expressed the many appearances of water.  Each of the paintings is 26.8 × 41.6 cm. Except for the first painting which is missing its title, the names of the other studies are: “洞庭風細”, “層波疊浪”, “寒塘清淺”, “長江万頃”, “黃河逆流”, “秋水回波”, “雲生滄海”, “湖光瀲灩”, “雲舒浪捲”, “曉日烘山”, “細浪漂漂”.

Books on Ma Yuan: “The Heart of Ma Yuan: The Search for a Southern Song Aesthetic” (2011) by Richard Edwards, and “The Way of Water and Sprouts of Virtue” (1997) by Sarah Allan.

“Little Brother and Little Sister” from the 1925 edition of Hansel and Gretel and Other Stories by the Brothers Grimm.

Volodymyr Tsisaryk Art ( 1978 - ).

Sculpture.

landscape studies (2020)

by Ada Limón

When the doctor suggested surgery

and a brace for all my youngest years,

my parents scrambled to take me

to massage therapy, deep tissue work,

osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine

unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,

and move more in a body unclouded

by pain. My mom would tell me to sing

songs to her the whole forty-five minute

drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-

five minutes back from physical therapy.

She’d say, even my voice sounded unfettered

by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang,

because I thought she liked it. I never

asked her what she gave up to drive me,

or how her day was before this chore. Today,

at her age, I was driving myself home from yet

another spine appointment, singing along

to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,

and I saw a mom take her raincoat off

and give it to her young daughter when

a storm took over the afternoon. My god,

I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her

raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel