White Plum Blossoms 1950

Sanyu painted “White Plum Blossoms” with confident brushstrokes, a kind of drawing-with-paint that feels both precise and intuitive. I can imagine him making this, starting with that ochre background, maybe even letting it dry before he added those bold black branches. There's something so direct about the way he’s laid down the paint, not fussing too much, but really letting the brush do its thing. The black branches reach across the canvas like musical lines, intersecting and creating little pockets of space for those delicate white blossoms. It’s almost like he’s improvising, playing with positive and negative space, and finding a balance between the organic and the abstract. The texture of the paint itself is something to notice. It looks thin, almost like ink, which gives the whole thing a kind of airy lightness. When I look at this painting, I feel like I’m having a conversation with Sanyu, like he’s showing me how to see the world in a new way. And that's what painting is all about, isn't it?