There are four basic brush strokes in Chinese painting. “After you learn these 4 things,” Diana tells her students, “you can do everything.” All of the images in Diana’s paintings are made with these four strokes.
Nicknamed “the four gentlemen,” the unique strokes demand a tremendous amount of discipline and practice in order to be mastered. “Bamboo,” “orchid,” “plum,” and “chrysanthemum” are the names of the different strokes, and when done properly each stroke produces a fine depiction of the plant that shares its name.
The first stroke Diana teaches her new students is bamboo. As a student herself, Diana learned to paint bamboo before she learned any of the other strokes. She now teaches the brushstrokes in the same order in which they were taught to her, but she is not as strict as her teachers were about having students master each stroke before being introduced to the next one. When Diana was learning how to paint, she studied only the bamboo stroke for a full five years, practicing every day.
“Bamboo can take you a long time” to learn, Diana explained to me, but she assured me a moment later that “it’s really not hard.” Besides, she insisted, “after you learn how to do it, it’s very fast.” As if to prove it, Diana swirled and lifted her brush from the ink stone, and a bamboo plant appeared on the page before us in a flash. “I always tell my students: ‘You learn Chinese painting like you do the piano; you need to practice.’”
Ms. Meng is Catholic, and “Diana” is her baptized name. When she was born she was given the first name “Siao Ching,” but ever since immigrating to the United States she has gone by the name “Diana” and made “Siao Ching” her middle name. In Chinese, a person’s last name – which may also be known as a “family name” or a “surname” – comes before his or her personal name. Ms. Meng’s family name is Hou, which makes her full given name Hou Siao Ching. “Meng” is her husband’s family name.
Instead of signing her pieces by hand, Diana often uses a unique seal with the Chinese characters of her full given name to affix her identity to her handiwork. Using a seal in situations where people in the U.S. might use a signature (such as on legal documents or when receiving packages by mail) has been a popular practice in China since ancient times.