Carl_Bergstrom

Who do it right?

That's like "Who wrote good music, Bach or Beethoven?"

Who has influenced my work?

Thus far, mostly Japanese styling, because that is far and away what I have seen and read the most of. It seems to me that Chinese styles are badly under-represented in the English-language literature. I'd love to see that change, because there is an incredible wealth of artistic ideas there in Chinese penjing, most of which I know very little about.

There may be another reason that Japanese styles have such a strong influence in my work. Compared to something like Lingnan school of penjing, Japanese bonsai is relatively formal, stylized, and codified. There are nice guidelines or even rules for how to style a tree. Think about "broom style" - not to belittle the artistic aspects of this style, but the form is much more tightly constrained. I think this helps when beginning to work with any art form. Lingnan school "big tree" style to me seems to be much more open. Too open for someone like me to be able to come in a adequately style elegant trees right off the bat. To put another way, it helps me tremendously to have guidelines "first branch, second branch, third branch, etc."

Perhaps the rules and guidelines are all there for penjing as well; perhaps this artform is as tightly constrained as Japanese bonsai. It may be that I just don't know these rules, because I've read relatively little in English (I've read four books on penjing compared to probably 40 books and twice as many magazines on bonsai) about them.

I could ramble on and on here, but I seem to be doing exactly that - rambling rather aimlessly. So I'll wrap it up by simply saying that I would to start developing my artistic understanding of Chinese forms, and I would be extremely grateful for any suggestions people might have about how to go about doing so.

Best regards,
Old Mister

__________________
In love with trees