“Time marches by on the grey walls of the Forbidden City. Shapes changing from big to small, from bright to gloomy. I remain in ‘holy’ expectation! The expected miracle has yet to arrive! The key is one must have sufficient patience to wait for the long awaited expectation to materialize…” That describes everything about me. This is the kind of light that I’m infatuated with. Sometimes I’m devoted to the essence of the senses. At other times I fall into the romance of art. I look for the assimilation in nature or to say, I seek those moments that make me hold my breath.

Winter of 2000! I found my heart as grey and heavy as the skies above the Forbidden City. I was living right next to the railway station at Jingcheng and Wenyu river. The rural scenery was just a few steps away. Above my head there was a flight path where aircraft went back and forth from the international airport of Beijing and passed above with a roar as they started their final approach to land.

During that period of time, I always wandered around the river side near a big iron bridge. Whenever I heard the roar of an airplane, I would involuntarily look up to the sky, to stare at the plane that was adjusting its angle so elegantly, then observed as it slowly disappeared behind the treetops in the ‘not so far’ distance. I always imagined the stories that were taking place or might be happening on those planes and how the diverse passengers would move on to the flourishing and lively city center after landing with different cultures, thoughts and all kinds of various moods…

Time just flies by. My life began at forty, the “age of living without doubts” and I’ve been living in this city for almost ten years. Even so, I can’t disregard or abandon my memories and fondest thoughts from my childhood.

I enjoy looking at the train tracks extending into infinity where they eventually join each other to become one. I even more enjoy watching the train moving its enormous body in an unhurried fashion and listening to its whistle which convulses my heart. Every time I drive by the train station, I always try to stop the car or just make it slow down so I can watch them for a while. I also love to see the leaving and landing of those airplanes. Maybe deep inside my heart, I nurture this desire of “traveling far away” and “flying”…

A strand of sunshine, the tall shadows of hundreds years old trees lying on the road… cars passing through gates, pressing on the old stone stairs… these are the kinds of images that can send my thoughts flying with distinct imagination with an unexplainable throb deep inside of my heart. The simple factors in paintings exist not for themselves but for the “distinct imaginations” they awake. The details that we give meaning to in the pictures only make us think. The rest will be full by memories.

At the night of a few days ago, showing some friends from Taiwan to go around Beijing, we, Lin Song, Yan Bo and other friends took a long walk of about five kilometers from Shichahai to the Forbidden City then from the imperial foundation to Tian’anmen.

The profound knowledge and humor of Yan Bo added fun to our journey. He was just like a free and perfect tour guide! I was so glad that I could go revisit the old scenes I had caressed with mind and painted many times already.

The last time I was there was two years ago and during that time, with so many distractions in life, my heart was not at peace. It was difficult to find the old, familiar moods. It was such a pleasure to revisit these familiar places at night but slowly the pleasure beacame heavier and heavier... physically, because of age… spiritually, because of my heavy mood and the perplexity in my soul.

The walls and streets were still there, but they were not the same any more. We didn’t know where the old trees gone that used to line the street with shade and comfort. The small path made of flashed bricks and the low embankment walls of the moat had all been changed into marble. The pine trees as pagoda shape made the Forbidden City walls look less glorious as the past. The harmony of shape and color between the hundred year old trees and the motley-colored city walls had been destroyed in half by the green lawn and triangle shaped trees. I was wordless! Only Silence. It was already in the early morning of the next day when I returned home, I dug out my paintings about the Forbidden City of several years ago and couldn’t fall in sleep for long time…

In the old days, when I came downtown for business or to visit bookstores, I always gave myself some reasons to walk along imperial foundation. It was only for renewed glimpse of those walls, the appurtenant trees, the gates and the grey, heavy colors adorning the wall themselves. In early Spring I would go to see the bright yellow sprouts that came out of the dead trees, and in winter, to see the redish, yellow walls with snow and the tree trunks standing upright. Now all of these are not existing anymore. I can only recall their majestic appearance within my own memories that were consummated and locked in time, put all together to see sealed as “Lost Paradise” in my paintings.

Paintings should show the opening, I’ve always thought so, and indicate how this opening could be perfect by imagination. These elements of inspiration are the main constituent parts of my paintings and my angles of view because they extend the significance of the possibilities of a painting and give the restrain and indications to the annotation of the appearance.
That walking journey at night made me think of the relationship between human and nature and civilization and nature. Now I have no desire to express in my heart (the present state of the Forbidden City). I would rather take it back to that peaceful time. Let it spread out its peaceful yet mysterious light which would probably give people some inspiration.
If a subversive or casual record might be two paths of exploration then the other kind is the psychological quest to look for one’s counterpoint and rest one’s love on it then tell one’s feelings. That’s the kind of painting I am looking for and working on.

There are two symbols of painting art today. One is the new self-awareness and the other is the acute feeling about tradition. I’m sure I belong to the latter kind, I know where my position is.
There have been three pages turned over since the new century began. During the period of today, among all these ever-changing and various denominations or art, one has to know what he has to do and what he can’t do. When he doesn’t give in to what he should not do, he can finally follow what his heart asks him and directs him to do, claiming a piece of free sky and space to himself to take tender and wonderful care for it.

Ma Bing, 2002
Published in the 4th issue of “Galleries” of 2003