“Persimmons, As You Wish” Round Fan

This fan holds the most ordinary branch of autumn persimmons. The leaves are graded in indigo to show front and back; the fruit is glazed layer after layer until the colour sinks into the silk.

Gongbi tests your patience: a line must be drawn steady, one leaf washed seven or eight times. I have come to like that slowness — it forces you to look at what you normally walk past.

I titled it for my family as a new-year gift, and it was the first gongbi piece I dared to submit to an exhibition.

Colour grows on the branch; it is not mixed on the palette.

— Gao Xinuo · studio note