Last fall I started taking chinese ink painting classes. The teacher is a local artist who teaches painting and chinese calligraphy to quite a few students at our school. I started on a bit of a lark with zero art experience beyond childhood crayon drawings but ended up loving it! I wrote a little about it last year.

When I first came here, I knew almost nothing about daoism (taoism...whatever) and honestly it wasn't what interested me the most. I love kung fu and the physical side of things is what appealed. Over the years however, things have changed. I still love to practice kung fu, tai ji, etc but now I also love learning about daoist philosophy, chanting the daoist chants, and.....painting. It may seem strange but Chinese culture is all kind of mixed up together so that daoism influences music, which influences tea culture, which influences chinese medicine, which influences buddhism, and so on and so on forever. It makes attempting to learn more about this stuff both challenging and so very interesting. Anyway, I really feel like my painting teacher (who lived in a daoist temple when he was younger) helps me to take a love and reverence for nature and put it to paper. Somehow, painting a tree, or some mountains, I really feel a connection with nature that seems extraordinary. It's changed the way I interact with my environment. I don't mean to belittle the education I've received here, but these handful of painting classes have helped me to understand daoism more than any lecture that Shifu has given or any well-written book I've read. I don't know why, I can barely even start to explain how it feels, but I'm so very glad I decided to give painting a try.