John King

“I am a composer/musician who uses chance and indeterminacy in my sonic work. I began doing ink drawings some time ago, inspired by the T’ang era poet and painter Wang Wei. I set a series of his 5-character quatrains and much admired his landscape paintings. In the beginning, I tried to paint “things,” and in looking at them as I worked, I was always disappointed because they didn’t “look” like the “thing.” So I decided to remove the “looking.” I then only worked on these ink drawings at night without light, so that all I saw was the rice paper (white) and all inks and water (dark). Without seeing anything other than the change from the light surface to a dark surface, I work without knowing what kind of image my gestures will render until the next morning. Mystified and delighted, I would ask myself, “Who did this?” without ever finding an answer.” John King