Lao Dan’s work goes back a long way. It is of course important that he held his first paintbrush at age two,
and even that his use of a venerable medium, Chinese ink, links him with a tradition thousands of years old.
At a much deeper level though, Lao Dan sees his work as correlating with ancient thought and ancestral
artistic practice. He describes a visit to Stonehenge as a revelation, an experience of immense gravity for
him, in which knowledge was communicated, then contained in many of his works. After ten years working
professionally at a graphic design firm, Lao Dan had a moment of epiphany. He was not expressing at all,
and in a search for balance, left the commercial world for a studio in the south-east of Beijing. Adopting
a diligent daily routine of calligraphy and drawing, he cites 2001 as the year he connected them, and his
way of working was transformed. Strongly emphasising the importance of science, intellectual endeavour and
research, he describes his ongoing fascination with the colour spectrum, natural phenomena, ancient mystical
sites and supernatural activity. “Modern art today is just fashion, I am reconciling the divide between art
and thought – I am thinking and creating”.

Lao Dan’s works come about swiftly, fluidly, not unlike the motion of traditional Chinese calligraphy.
Even the brushstrokes are in keeping with calligraphic practice – broad, narrow, delicate, sweeping, wet,
dry. What is rendered is not recognisable as Chinese script at all. A flurry of marks animates the surface,
agitatedly moving as if in brisk dialogue with one another. The coming together of lines at times gives the
illusion of recognisable forms – a face, a bird – but your eyes are swept along before they can linger too
long. It may be more appropriate to link Lao Dan’s work and that of early Chinese Neolithic rock painting.
In the same way that these early predecessors were compelled to record their beliefs and world view through
line, pattern and symbol, Lao Dan draws on these tenets – the expression of essential ideas through
fervently organic mark making.

The efficacy with which he works only applies to the actual production, when in actuality he is in no hurry.
Lao Dan explains the theory behind choice of medium and colour has been a long and patient journey. He
explores the colour system with great reverence, using hand motions to show how the Western idea of colour
is ‘straight’ like a line, where red is red. The Eastern colour system however, is more like a circle,
round and comprehensive with no end points. Black, the colour of Chinese ink, he says has five distinct
tones to what we may perceive as simply ‘black’. His limited palette is not limited at all, but a
committed study of the unlimited scope of just a few tones. “Maybe one day when I am very old, my works
will be full of colour”, he smiles.

So is he a contemporary artist? Anything but, he refutes. Although reworking our perception of ink in an
undeniably modern manner, and even today enjoys the robustness of acrylic on canvas, he “will not leave
tradition behind”. Embracing the wealth of knowledge past and artistic philosophy left in clues for us to
read, Lao Dan sees himself as a bridge of communication between past and present. He suggests his pieces
are mind maps of wisdom, an abstract language wrapped in a visual veneer of metaphors. Taking a sip of
water, he holds his glass up, “A glass has space, but it is also a metaphor. Instead of speaking about
space, why don’t we use the glass to talk about it?”