The Emptiness and Reality of the Picture Stone

By Xia Huabing

When appreciating the picture stone, we find that some places on the picture are relatively empty, giving people the feeling of openness, clarity, comfort, freshness, flexibility or looseness, frivolity, and some places are relatively solid, giving people the feeling of density, compactness, steadiness, firmness or congestion, stacking, rigidity and dullness. It can be seen that emptiness and reality are closely related to the beauty and ugliness of the picture.

Emptiness, in painting, is a screen structure with distinction, emptiness and fluidity. It generally refers to the places where there is no material entity or seemingly no material entity on the screen and its structural form. Reality, in painting, is a material, substantive and stable picture structure, which generally refers to the material entity and its structural form that can be seen on the picture.

Nature and human living environment are both virtual and real. The paintings reflecting nature and human life and the pictures on similar picture stones are also virtual and real.

Virtual and real structure is an important structural form on the picture. Certain painting content, expression means and expression methods are suitable for a certain virtual and real structure.