Prof. Ho Siu-kee asked me to primitively render the challenge of landscape drawing and landscape painting in my final assignment. But, when I did this series of "I SWIM" creations, I did not feel like doing sketching as similar Civic Painting Society Camp. Rather, I felt myself as repeating what Sum Ling from "Collar" has ever done in Ms. Choi Yan-chi's drawing class at BUVA in 2006.

1. 1
FAAS5304C Creative Workshop (Prof. Ho Siu-kee)
Self-Reflective Report
Name: LEE Kwun-leung Vincent (李冠良) Major: MA Fine Arts – Year 2
Student No.: 1007070165
Lots of people assume that “artistic conception” (yi jing, 意境) is a monopoly of
Chinese culture. But, after reading the analysis of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, I initially
notice that this Western aesthetic philosopher’s introduction of “autofigurative
sentiments” (or “intentional species”), “visual quale”, “instantaneous glimpse of
movement” and “dehiscence” also corresponds with the idea of spirituality from
Chinese Taoist philosophers’ emphasis on “artistic conception”. The notion of
“autofigurative sentiments” corresponds with how Jane Collins and Andrew Nisbet
described as “a vision without eye movement”1
, whereas the portraying process is
driven by the sensational function of one’s mobile body.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty made reference on Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl’s
theories while interpreting “autofigurative sentiments”, as Husserl mentioned
“intentional analysis” and “peculiar understanding” in his “General Theory on Pure
Phenomenology” publication. Husserl agreed with a direct observation on peculiarity,
which was an innermost illusion indeed, and also a manipulation of our pure
consciousness as similar as Rene Descartes’ pre-reflective mode of self-reflection
based on intentionality. Maurice Merleau-Ponty legitimized the values of
Impressionism and Expressionism by encouraging an individual use of “feeling veins”
to perceive a multi-faceted vision based on the skills of “sidewise disclosure”, and I
am going to explore the intentional experiences within my innermost qualities and my
level of transcendence through portraying fishing boats and swimming pools.
Mid-Term Assignment
I served at Galerie Le Createur as an art-jamming tutor during Donald Tsang’s
administration era, whereas celebrities like Lady E (Edith Lau) from the “Happy Kids’
Alliance” programme on ViuTV Channel was also my client. What my employer
requested me to do was to provide a great diversity of online referential images
collected from the Google-search engine. These printed images were the episodes of
the natural and foreign sights that I had never got any experiences of travelling there
1
Jane Collins and Andrew Nisbet, “Theatre and Performance Design - A Reader in Scenography”
Pp. 243. The United Kingdom: Routledge, 1st
Edition in March 2010 {Chapter 32 – “Eye and Mind” by
Maurice Merleau-Ponty}

2. 2
at all, and then I had to promptly imagine that I had ever stayed there for leisure
which I manipulated such romantic sentiments of spiritual observation to represent the
corresponding visions onto the canvases as the products for demonstrations to clients
and souvenirs for sale. So, I used to interrogate the values of life drawing very often,
and I found this gesture as a kind of absurdity concerning my conventional random
adoption of printed images to compose a bunch of copied kitsch-art creations for
coping with the curatorial demands of contemporary-art market in Art Basel or other
international art fairs because no one cares for your process of cultivation at all. What
I needed to fulfill was a mass production with cost efficiency.
Left: “Boat Couple” art-jamming painting at Galerie Le Createur
Right: a printed image for reference during my re-development on my “Boat Couple”
painting
But, when I do researches on the “autofigurative sentiments” advocated by Maurice
Merleau-Ponty, I rediscover the importance of “internalism” concerning a devotion of
one’s “real body” to the process of mind-based art creation which is often mentioned
by a local watercolour painter Kinsan Chung during his detailed cultivation of plant
tissues and rocky textures.
I tried to rework on a piece of art-jamming painting called “Boat Couple” at Galerie
Le Createur. I got another photo from Google-search engine that two blue fishing
boats were berthed along the coast within the darkness of midnight, and I would like
to see if I could represent the “autofigurative sentiments” of portraying two lovely but
romantic little boats with a desire for love nourishments during the process of
describing the illusions from the berthing of two very traditional fishing boats with a

3. 3
vision of Chineseness. Then, I noticed that I was much influenced by the “visual quale”
that I observed the fishing boats on Outlying Island as a rural-urban commuter very
often, and such impression in my mind would undergo a fusion with the hundredfold
cosmopolitan light along the Victoria Harbour as well. When the fishing boats remain
at the internal shelter of my Cheung Chau hometown to prevent from the attacks of
typhoons, they project the navigation lights to the dark sky and make the heaven as
well as the surrounding facilities being dyed with a sunset kind of reddish mist. This
implies that I was no longer driven by my eye movement to calculate the exact
proportions and chrominance of the printed image for developing my reworked
paintings at all.
“Two Fishing Boats within Darkness” (exhibited at the 3rd
Floor Concourse of Cheng
Ming Building at CUHK New Asia College)
The way I divided the printed image into five different segments with five different
kinds of neglected focuses is an accomplishment of Jean-Francois Lyotard’s
“paralogisme” (parallel constructivism, 平行建構)2
theory, in which I ruined the
“system of public logics” (公理系統)3
as an expectation for a piece of objective art
creation with Realism as emphasis. Photorealism, in this case, is regarded as a
“system of public logics” that corresponds with Plato’s pursuit on perfectionism. But,
2
Written by Jean-Francois LYOTARD, Translated by CHE Jinshan (車槿山) & Approved by Lin
Zhiming (林志明), “La condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir” (後現代狀態．關於知識的報
告) Pp. 162. Taipei: Wu-Nan Book Incorporation, 1st Edition in May 2012 {Chapter 11 – The
legalization being achieved through researches and an export of capabilities}
3
(Same as above) Pp. 160 {Chapter 11 – The legalization being achieved through researches and an
export of capabilities}

4. 4
Maurice Merleau-Ponty thought that Photorealism is definitely impossible once
“autofigurative sentiments” and “visual quale” dominate your hand to paint. Once I
have disintegrated a piece of printed image about two traditional fishing boats through
the notion of “paralogisme”, the five pieces of canvas puzzles can no longer be
recombined as a piece of entity with successful linkages of pixel and substance details
among the five episodes. This is as similar as Jean-Francois Lyotard’s explanation that
a storm of instability is imposed to the “system of public logics” which permanently
causes a vision of perfectionism to suffer from uncertainties. The notion of
“dehiscence” in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theory can be seen from the spot-lights
within the fishing boats and the electrical-wire areas, in which you can perceive a
sense of hopeful changes from the specific points of brighteness on my five paintings
that opens you a renewed vision to make breakthrough on darkness.
Final Assignment
The second project aims at transcending the limitation of my over-reliance on printed
or digital images as similar as the operation of an art-jamming gallery to perceive both
the immanence and the ideality4
from a visible world. I have chosen swimming pool
as my theme of representation, in which I regularly encounter the affairs and changes
there due to my lifeguard duties. The CUHK Swimming Pool is a place where I
attained a 2nd
position in the Division Group of 50m Boys Freestyle Swim Race
4
Jane Collins and Andrew Nisbet, “Theatre and Performance Design - A Reader in Scenography”
Pp. 244. The United Kingdom: Routledge, 1st
Edition in March 2010 {Chapter 32 – “Eye and Mind” by
Maurice Merleau-Ponty

5. 5
during the 52nd Chung Chi College Swimming Gala in September 2021, in which it
left me a youthful swimmer memory very remarkably. My “visual quale” for doing
this series of life drawings at CUHK Swimming Pool was actually about an
imagination of swimming with a group of cute twinks by assuming me as a qualified
member of school or university swimming team. Before the day of my drawing task at
CUHK Swimming Pool, I went to the TKO Papillons Square for catching up with the
Fans Gathering of P1X3L and appreciating P1X3L’s performance for its new song
“Just Lean On Me”. So, I was totally brainwashed by the illusion of Phoebus Ng’s
swimming charisma in P1X3L’s casting for ViuTV’s new evening film “I SWIM” on
the next day of swimming-pool life drawing after P1X3L’s Fans Gathering. So, the
“visual quale” in accordance with Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s ideal is a version of
mixture among my lifeguard working experiences, my invaluable breakthrough in
university swimming gala and my desire for receiving energetic swimming-team
trainings as similar as Phoebus’ casting in “I SWIM” evening movie.
Upper: My participation in 52th Chung Chi College Swimming Gala / P1X3L’s Fans
Gathering before the day of my drawing task
Lower: Phoebus’ casting for the “I SWIM” evening film of ViuTV Channel

6. 6
I adopted charcoal for presenting an expressionistic vision of CUHK Swimming Pool
which corresponded with the idea of “chiaroscuro”. Indeed, if manipulating my
“autofigurative sentiments” to develop a “chiaroscuro” effect, I had to ensure that my
sketchy and transformational effects can fulfill Xue Rongnian ( 薛 永 年 )’s
interpretations in his “About The Artistic Conceptions” (《關於意境》) article: For
the emphasis on “illusion” (yi, 意) and “sentiments” (qing, 情), I had to realize “the
truthfulness of sentiments” (qing zhen, 情真), “the freshness of illusions” (yi xin, 意
新), “the remoteness of illusions” (yi yuan, 意遠) and “the deepness of illusions” (yi
shen, 意深). For the emphasis on “realm” (jing4, 境) and “scene” (jing3, 景), I
endeavored to pursue refinements in “the truthfulness of scene” (jing3 zhen, 景真),
“the truthfulness of realm” (jing4 zhen, 境真), “the realism of realm” (jing4 shi, 境
實) and “the deepness of realm” (jing4 shen, 境深)5
. Different stairs of different
heights along the auditorium stairway result in a variation of “the remoteness of
illusions” (yi yuan, 意遠), “the deepness of illusions” (yi shen, 意深) and “the
deepness of realm” (jing4 shen, 境深). I adjusted
my sitting positions for realizing such variations
throughout my five different pieces of drawing
cultivations. Of course, my priority went to the
exploration on the first category about “illusion”
and “sentiments” once I enabled my mobile body to
sense the supernatural forces from the visible
swimming-pool episodes based on the
“autofigurative sentiments” of Maurice
Merleau-Ponty’s theory. The chiaroscuro effect
from the vagueness of my charcoal backgrounds in
my drawings reflects my courageous and
non-restrained mode of travelling spirits connecting
to the leisure of Heavenly Creator within the
breath-driven immensity of misty and foggy
circumstance. It corresponds with the loosened
pigments of Rococo painting style from France if talking about “autofigurative
sentiments” in a Western aesthetic perspective because Maurice Merleau-Ponty
encouraged painters to “romanticize” the visible world with still objects as comprising
the “instantaneous glimpses of movements”.
5
Zhou Jiyin (周積寅), “The Theories of Chinese Painting – Edited Chapters” (中國畫論．輯要) Pp.
252. Nanjing: Jiangsu Art Press (江蘇美術出版社), 1st
Edition in July 2005 {Theories on Artistic
Conception (意境論)}

7. 7

8. 8
First-stage creativity:
Five pieces of on-site life drawings at CUHK Swimming Pool
Paul Ryan – “Sketchbook 64 page 51” (Mixed Media in sketchbook, 15 x 21 cm,
2005)

9. 9
Redid the five pieces of on-site life drawings on the 3rd
Floor of Cheng Ming Building
The second stage of my final-assignment creativity was to rework on my five small
pieces of on-site life drawings getting done at CUHK Swimming Pool by adopting
five huge pieces of watercolour papers. According to Zhen Wei (甄巍)’s analysis,
Paul Cézanne developed a habit of repetitive adjustments on the painting surfaces6
.
Yet, Paul Cézanne liked to portray the same landscape episode on different canvases
for pursuing a further refinement on the brushstroke and chrominance details, as well
6
Zhen Wei (甄巍), “Modern Art – Guidance for Connoisseurship Series 2” (現代美術．鑑賞導引系
列 2) Pp. 63. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing (H.K.) Co., Ltd., January 2001 {2 – Paul Cézanne}

10. 10
as foreseeing whether there would be other kinds of renewed aesthetic effects on the
next canvases for a particular vision of his observation due to the fluctuation of his
“autofigurative sentiments” in different pieces of cultivation. I tried to play with Paul
Cézanne’s over-persistent psychology and made my reminiscence on the youthful
sentiments from the CUHK Swimming Pool as a kind of meditation. Indeed, Paul
Ryan would also initiate a new “double spread” from a new sketchbook to imitate the
spontaneity and the direct unedited nature of a rough landscape expression. He
established lots of new “double spreads” displays to simply challenge the
preconceptions of originality7
. The trees with trunks and the rocky textures of the
surrounding cliffs from Paul Ryan’s “Sketchbook 64 page 51” creation are of vibrant
“dry-cum-wet” brushstrokes mixed with “condensed-cum-pale” colours, in which his
brush dynamics correspond with the “instantaneous glimpse of movement”
expectation of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. For my five huge pieces of redone drawings, I
deliberately added certain black cursive roots in different corners of the swimming
pool; and my imitation on such “dehiscent” effects by William Kentridge required a
slight fusion with the calligraphic aesthetics of Chinese tradition, such as the “middle
methodicalness”, “lateral methodicalness”, “reversed methodicalness”, “changing
methodicalness”, “broken methodicalness”, “biased methodicalness” and so forth
suggested by a suburban-sketcher called Wong Chong-wah (王創華)8
. My oil-pastel
expression on the “dehiscent” roots fabricated an “instantaneous glimpse of
movement” in accordance with Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis and it made the
modern recreational facility I admire at CUHK campus be filled with the breath of
mysterious forestry atmosphere instead of just showing an emotionless grayish realm
with tranquility.
John Li Tung-keung (李東強) and Lo Siu-king (盧少瓊) suggested the repetitive,
rapid or unstably-sparkling linear expressions as a substitution to the stable and
articulate contour outlines for the sake of producing the “dynamical” visual effects9
,
which can also be regarded as “instantaneous glimpse of movement”. This was
applied to the manner of how I portrayed the trees with overlapping leafs on branches
7
Curated by Professors Paul Coldwell and Stephen Farming, “Drawing: Interpretation / Translation”
Pp. 12-13. The United Kingdom: CCW Graduate School at University of Arts London, 2011
{Introducing the work – by Paul Coldwell, Professor of Fine Art at Camberwell Chelsea Wimbledon,
University of the Arts of London}
8
Edited by Wong Chong-wah (王創華), “Lines in Art” (王創華．線條的藝術) Pp. 12. Hong Kong:
Wan Li Book Company Limited (萬理機構出版有限公司), Repeated Edition in 1999 {1. General
Theories on Linear Art}
9
John Li Tung-keung (李東強) and Lo Siu-king (盧少瓊), “An Exploration on Art and Design 1 –
Learning, Appreciating & Creating” (美術與設計探索 1 — 學習．欣賞．創作) Pp.12. Hong Kong:
Jing Kung Educational Press, 1st
Edition in 1999 {5. Drawing: Capturing the motion}

11. 11
and the thrilling bushes nearby. If using Chinese ink as creative medium, the
overlapping leafs would just be drawn in withered brush (ku bi, 枯筆) with charred
ink effect (zhao mo fa, 焦墨法). But if I adopted charcoal and oil pastels for doing so
in this current case of my final-project development, it required a duplication of
motional strokes in an alternative use of lightness and heaviness during my scratching
gesture for developing something as similar as the loosened vision of dehydrated
willows. This Sinological manipulation of charcoal and oil pastels also corresponded
with a Qing painter called Shi Tao (石濤)’s nonchalant way of composing the hill
backgrounds with cursive ink strokes, as you can see that one of my five redone
drawings is with Shi Tao’s style of misty and foggy hill expression where you can feel
like breathing in the fresh oxygen from the corresponding gaps and holes. It is
assumed that, the Zen-based philosophical cultivation of Shi Tao in his “drunk-liked”
self-expressive brushwork was also driven by his “autofigurative sentiments” in terms
of sensing the travelling-liked hallucinations from the mountains based on his
subconscious mind from his fainting body, whereas his “visual quale” was much more
about his established perception towards Bodhisattvas’ emergence within the heavenly
palace from his reading experiences on the legendary fairy tales.

12. 12
Second-stage creativity:
Five redone pieces of huge drawings based on the effects of five on-site life
drawings as references
The third stage of my final-assignment creativity was to create two acrylic paintings

13. 13
on canvases in a fully-pledged subjective colour tone, in which I transformed the
entire vision of CUHK Swimming Pool with reference to the two episodes being
captured during the previous on-site life drawing there to be purely bluish based on
the inspirations from Alfred Hui’s Canto-pop song called “Blue-Blooded Man” (《藍
血人》) and added vertical pigment-leakage effects as similar as the raindrop illusions
of Tsang Chui-mei’s paintings. This was absolutely an “egocentric” rendering on
chrominance sensations, which was similar to Jane Collins and Andrew Nisbet’s
analysis on a manifestation of the very other side of our body for observation in the
process of perceiving “autofigurative sentiments” based on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s
ideal: “It is a self through confusion, narcissism, through inherence of the one who
sees in that which he sees, and through inherence of sensing in the sensed.”10
A
painting called “The Swimmers” by Janet Lynch from an art gallery in the United
Kingdom called “Livingstone St. Ives” also made the Perranporth-based gallery
associate Charlotte getting indulged to a realm of narcissism while writing for the
curatorial statement, as Charlotte described the blue vision from “The Swimmers” as
invoking a sense of intense peace, serenity, weightlessness and tranquility due to her
feeling of being immersed in water and seemingly melting away within a still status of
the time. The entire moisturized vision of my two acrylic paintings with the idea of
subjectivity are a bit similar to the Chinese-ink infiltration effect in literati painting
tradition, whereas the vertical pigment-leakage effects correspond with Maurice
Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on “instantaneous glimpse of movement”.
Left: Explored the pigment-leakage effect on canvas / Right: Janet Lynch’s “The
Swimmers” painting from “Livingstone St. Ives” art gallery in the U.K
10
Jane Collins and Andrew Nisbet, “Theatre and Performance Design - A Reader in Scenography”
Pp. 244. The United Kingdom: Routledge, 1st Edition in March 2010 {Chapter 32 – “Eye and Mind”
by Maurice Merleau-Ponty}

14. 14
Third-stage creativity:
Two redone pieces of acrylic paintings on canvases based on the effects of on-site
life drawings as references (24” x 36”)
The Power of Display
I deeply remember that my former classmate from HKBU Academy of Visual Arts
called Joseph Wong Kai-yu (黃繼宇) was inspired by Ms. Choi Yan-chi’s education to
exhibit his expressionistic drawings inside the AVA Gallery of Kai Tak Campus.
Indeed, a participant from the “KingMaker Contest 4” programme on ViuTV Channel
called Ah Ling (Sum Ling 芯駖, Original name: Li Suk Ling 李淑鈴)11
was also
from Ms. Choi Yan-chi’s Drawing Class for doing the similar kind of drawing
exhibition based on “The Power of Display” ideal. Mary Anne Staniszewski, as the
author of “The Power of Display” publication, stated that lots of art lovers forgot
about the notion of installation design as an aesthetic medium and historical category,
and she thus introduced the knowledge of “exhibition design” for a macro-viewed
11
Design Committee of Academy of Visual Arts Graduation Exhibition 2009, “HKBU Academy of
Visual Arts Yearbook 2009 – B.A. (Hons) in Visual Arts” Pp. 88-89. Hong Kong: Academy of Visual
Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University, 1st
Edition in June 2009

15. 15
vision of portfolio presentation. Ms. Choi Yan-chi stressed the integration between
drawing and installation with reference to Mr. Peter Benz’s promotion on “exhibit
design” educational ideal while guiding Joseph how to display his series of drawings
in a narration of talking about a fascination on traffic perspectives. A drawing exhibit
on the wall was decorated with a window frame, which implied that Joseph observed
the graceful world through the taxi window since he was a child with his dad serving
as a taxi driver. This mechanical “visual quale” of taxi perspective also motivated him
to draw the wheels from the motorbikes or BMX bicycles. Joseph also placed some of
his drawings onto the table and the floor with a zebra crossing, so that the vision of
appreciation would be three-dimensional as similar as visiting a vehicle fair.
Joseph Wong Kai-yu’s drawing exhibits at the gallery of Kai Tak Campus (2006)
Between September 2006 and November 2006, Ah Ling (Sum Ling 芯駖) and my
other former BUVA classmates from Ms. Choi Yan-chi’s Drawing Class chose to
perceive “autofigurative sentiments” based on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s ideal and
practice on-site life drawing in different corners of Kai Tak Campus for contributing
art creations to a joint-student drawing exhibition at AVA Gallery in December 2006.
For me, I must make good use of the spiritually-retreated environment in Cheng Ming

16. 16
Building to fabricate an “I SWIM” atmosphere with reference to Joseph Wong
Kai-yu’s “The Power of Display” experience of making a drawing exhibition. The
“Union between Heaven and Man” campus environment of New Asia College outside
the windows of the 3rd
Floor Concourse in Cheng Ming Building is exactly the blue
sky with comfortable beam of dawn or sunset being intruded to the interior. The
architectures nearby are of pale colour tones. Thus, I can ensure that my bluish and
grayish series of swimming-pool drawings are complemented by such minimalistic
mode of chrominance atmosphere.
Diagrams of art-exhibit distribution on the 3rd
Floor Concourse of Cheng Ming
Building:
1. Exhibition wall panels

17. 17
2. Floor in front of the exhibition wall panels
Bibliography
 Jane Collins and Andrew Nisbet, “Theatre and Performance Design - A
Reader in Scenography”. The United Kingdom: Routledge, 1st
Edition in
March 2010
 Written by Jean-Francois LYOTARD, Translated by CHE Jinshan (車槿山)
& Approved by Lin Zhiming (林志明), “La condition postmoderne: rapport
sur le savoir” (後現代狀態．關於知識的報告). Taipei: Wu-Nan Book

18. 18
Incorporation, 1st Edition in May 2012
 Zhou Jiyin (周積寅), “The Theories of Chinese Painting – Edited Chapters”
(中國畫論．輯要). Nanjing: Jiangsu Art Press (江蘇美術出版社), 1st
Edition
in July 2005
 Zhen Wei (甄巍), “Modern Art – Guidance for Connoisseurship Series 2”
(現代美術．
鑑賞導引系列 2). Hong Kong: Joint Publishing (H.K.) Co., Ltd.,
January 2001
 Curated by Professors Paul Coldwell and Stephen Farming, “Drawing:
Interpretation / Translation”. The United Kingdom: CCW Graduate School
at University of Arts London, 2011
 Edited by Wong Chong-wah (王創華), “Lines in Art” (王創華．線條的藝
術). Hong Kong: Wan Li Book Company Limited (萬理機構出版有限公司),
Repeated Edition in 1999
 John Li Tung-keung (李東強) and Lo Siu-king (盧少瓊), “An Exploration
on Art and Design 1 – Learning, Appreciating & Creating” (美術與設計探
索 1 — 學習．欣賞．創作). Hong Kong: Jing Kung Educational Press, 1st
Edition in 1999
 Design Committee of Academy of Visual Arts Graduation Exhibition 2009,
“HKBU Academy of Visual Arts Yearbook 2009 – B.A. (Hons) in Visual
Arts”. Hong Kong: Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University,
1st Edition in June 2009