Rock Poem by Li Bai c 1990 Aaqus innovation c 52 x 60 cm

It is also an important painting in the Calligraphy Series because it contains the first half a poem by the great 700s Tang Dynasty poet, Li Bai.

The forest rock in Poem is a large, flat dinner plate-size dolorite rock.
The 'plate' is hidden in grass and twigs near the top of Nantasenhai hill. It is beautifully patterned with lichen.
As a lichen rock, it has cousin rocks nearby, such as the Lichen rock reimagined in a 2023 painting.

Like all ground paintings, I happened on poem rock while strolling and contemplating the forest.
Later, the ground image returned in surreal dreams, ready for painting.
The rock brought to mind the first lines of a Tang Poem by Li Bai (701 to 762).

Often when I walk here, I feel like Alice in Wonderland.
Walking uncovers uncanny creatures and occult forest features. This mysterious feeling takes over like wine, or music.

I express my wonder using lines read top to bottom, right to left, from Li Bai -

Trophy wine illuminates my glass darkly
Thirsty I drink in the guitar crescendo

This forest is called Southern Tasmania Wilderness Sea ... Nan ta sen hai ... but it also translates as Direction-seeking Pagoda Obscure Mind.

Zen Buddhist references pour from the Li Bai poem,
especially if we move from the heady pleasures of a forest wonderland
to lying low on the ground, as Li Bai writes in two lines that finish the poem -

Drunk and lying on the battle ground, the knights sober up...
Throughout history, how many others return from the struggle?

Being a poem, the lines are full of ambiguity. The word return can also mean the Islamic tribes
that swept over the Tang Dynasty world trade routes (the Silk Road)
and shut down Buddhist and Chinese civilization in central Asia in the 700s.
Li Bai was drunk and enjoying the pleasures of music and literature, safely inside the homeland,
far from the news coming from the western Silk Road battle grounds.

Did Li Bai know that Tang China was not defeated but in transition?
As trade and civilization collapsed in the west, China turned overseas to eastern trade and culture.

For me, time spent at Nantasenhai, where lies this lichen rock, is a time of wonder in the wilderness (the 'Sen' in the forest name).

But life revolves in the Dao of lights and shades - I eventually return to lay my head down in a global city, retiring nightly from the challenges of the world.

It is easy to forget that the energy and directions of nature wrap a network over and around the planet.

Rock Poem is in a private collection.

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