Mountains and Water comes from the common Chinese style of painting: 山水 (shan1shui3). Historically, the artists who developed this style are intellectuals who longed to escape from the real world and be at peace with nature. Painting was often not the artist’s primary skill. They ussually had “real jobs”. The paintings depict the Neo-Taoist utopia that often exists only in the minds of these intellectuals. They long to be “at one” with nature and out of the world. It is this state of mind that I try to achieve through fly fishing. I long to be “in the painting” – hidden in the vastness of the mountain with my feet in a stream.
