「Look at the Picture and Talk about the Painting」The Colors and BlankSpaces of “Snow”in Eastern and Western Art

“Snow” is a muse shared by both Eastern and Western art.

The snow in the West is a feast of colors and light and shadow. Monet’s early works captured the serenity and tranquility of the snow scene with soft silver-gray and blue-violet tones. In his middle period, he incorporated the flat composition of Japanese ukiyo-e, and his colors became bolder. In his later years, his brushstrokes became more lively, and the snow scenes approached an abstract dream. Anders Andersen-Lundby captured the cold and warm changes in the snow, the pink under the setting sun and the blue-violet in the forest shadows. His depiction of the environmental colors gave the snow a sense of breathing, transforming the desolation into a kind of serene and romantic healing power.

In Eastern paintings, snow is depicted without color but through the use of ink techniques to create a scene, with blank spaces concealing the essence of Zen. Xu Wei’s “Snow Bamboo” uses dry and dark ink to paint bamboo, with the blank spaces between the branches representing the cold snowflakes. Although the word “snow” is not present, the entire painting exudes a sense of snow. Ma Yuan adopts a “one corner” composition, leaving blank spaces to represent the boundless snowfield, revealing the vastness of the universe through a small part. Amidst the cold and desolation, there lies the harmony between nature and humanity. Huang Yongyu’s “Viewing Snow at the Lake Heart Pavilion” depicts a pavilion and a boat with just one horizontal stroke and two dots, leaving the rest to blank spaces. These blank areas allow viewers to imagine the snow scene infinitely, which is a Zen-like blank space, a fusion of the heart and the snow.

The West deconstructs the form of snow with colors, while the East sketches the artistic conception of snow with blank spaces. Different approaches in brushstrokes, yet both capture the beauty of snow. As winter sets in, the North is dressed in white, and it’s the perfect time to enjoy the snow in Northeast China.

The tea for today is all gone. Next time, I’ll brew a fresh pot and enjoy art with you again.