European Couple and Child Playing
"What was the painter's gaze that held the figures of unfamiliar strangers on silk?"
📝ONGO's Reflection
This is a Chinese painting of unknown hand, holding a Western couple and child at play together. To the painter they would have been strangers, unfamiliar in feature and in dress. Yet what flows across the surface is not wariness but the ordinary affection of a family at ease with a child. In this painting I see an attitude toward the unfamiliar. People of a different look, seen closely, live the same affection and the same daily life. The painter's eye, which did not stop at the surprise of difference but looked one step deeper, rendered the strangers as one family. Looked at closely, beyond difference lies sameness.
🌱Apply It Today
Find in a person who feels unfamiliar one face of daily life that resembles your own.
