I just can’t stop trying to capture the colours and designs of ancient “blue-green” bronzes. I include them in some of my Still Life paintings and prints too. The Gu is one of my favourite shapes:
The poem on all of these says “Ancient inkstone grinding ink: dreaming still painting. Blue-green bronze reflecting moon: awake still thinking.”
Silver Moon is a free interpretation of Warring States silver and gold inlay.
This is the first bronze I ever painted – a personal favourite, and I am glad it has gone to a good home.
Morgan Jones, who volunteers at Compton Verney, and is very knowledgeable about bronzes, once said he tried to imagine them new and shiny. That inspired me to try to paint bronzes as they might have been. I had them mounted in China as the “collector’s handscrolls” below.
Here is an old and new version of a You vessel.
I particularly like this Dou from Shanghai Museum, imaging that the inlaid figures and animals were in turquoise, though they were in fact in copper originally.
Playful paintings of bronzes – a ding, and that dou again:
