Wind through the lotus pond 2019

Dayou Lu made "Wind through the lotus pond" with ink and colour on paper, and what grabs me first is the directness and the economy of the mark-making. It feels immediate, intuitive, like the making was a kind of performance. Look closely, and you can see the way the ink bleeds and spreads, creating these soft, blurred edges that give the whole scene a dreamy, atmospheric quality. The colours, they're not overly saturated, but they're still so vibrant and full of life. The blues and greens in the leaves, the oranges in the upper part of the painting, and the way the white flowers pop against that backdrop. I think about Helen Frankenthaler and the way she poured diluted paint onto canvas to create these luminous, ethereal washes of colour, or maybe even Cy Twombly, with his scribbled, gestural marks that feel both chaotic and deeply personal. This piece reminds me that art is always in conversation with itself, that artists are always building on what came before, while also pushing in new directions.