In the Space Between Strokes: Finding My Father Through Chinese Calligraphy

There are moments when art doesn’t stay confined to a frame or a sheet of paper. It quietly enters your inner world and shifts something you didn’t even know was waiting to be moved. That is what happened to me last night.

Learning to See, Before Learning to Feel

This experience didn’t begin with the artwork itself, but with learning how to look at it.

A few days ago, I read Fei Wu’s blog post on how to appreciate Chinese calligraphy. Until then, I had always admired calligraphy from a distance. It felt beautiful, but also inaccessible—like a language I didn’t quite know how to enter.

Her writing changed that. She explained how calligraphy is not just about the words being written, but about rhythm, breath, movement, and the emotional state of the artist. Each stroke carries intention. Each pause holds meaning. It is not just writing—it is a living expression of the artist’s inner world.

After reading her post, I realized that appreciating calligraphy requires a shift—from trying to understand it intellectually to allowing yourself to feel it.

Encountering Shanmao Wu’s Work

With that new perspective, I returned to the calligraphy of Shanmao Wu—Fei’s late father and Xiang Li’s late husband. He was a respected and widely regarded calligrapher in the fine art circles of China during the 1980s and 1990s.

I had seen his artwork before, but this time, I saw it differently.

The compositions felt powerful and expressive. The strokes moved with confidence, sometimes grounded and deliberate, sometimes loose and almost airborne. There was a balance between control and spontaneity, as if discipline and freedom were coexisting on the same page.

What stood out to me most was not just the visual form, but the emotional energy behind it. There was a depth that felt personal, even without fully understanding the language. Below are two of his artworks shared by Fei Wu.

Reading What Is Not Fully Said

Last night as I spent more time with the pieces, I found myself less focused on decoding the words and more on sensing what they carried.

Even without knowing every character, I could feel a certain emotional undercurrent. The work seemed to reflect movement without certainty, restraint without suppression, and an acceptance of things that are not fully resolved.

It felt like the poems were engaging with life as it is—complex, unfinished, and constantly in motion. And that is where something shifted for me.

An Unexpected Bridge to My Father

As I sat with these pieces, I found myself thinking of my father.

My father was an artist too. He was an architect by profession, but he also created abstract oil paintings. I did not grow up closely with him. My parents separated when I was very young, and my interactions with him were limited.

The few times I visited him were often emotionally complicated. There was anxiety around his excessive drinking and smoking, and as a child, I did not have the tools to process those feelings. What remained was a mix of distance, confusion, and unspoken resentment. Before I had the chance to truly understand him as a person, he passed away. I was 27.

Fragments of Memory

Despite that distance, certain memories stayed with me. I remember visiting homes he had designed—spaces that felt intentional and thoughtfully constructed. And in those homes, I remember seeing his artwork on the walls.

They were abstract oil paintings—textured, layered, and not immediately understandable. As a child, I didn’t know how to interpret them, but I remember being drawn to them. There was something intriguing about them, even if I couldn’t explain why. Looking back now, I realize those paintings may have been one of the few ways I was exposed to his inner world.

The Life You Lived vs. The Life You Missed

As I grew older, and especially after becoming a parent myself, I began to reflect more deeply on my childhood.

I started to recognize that my experience was not the same as many of my peers. There were gaps—moments and relationships that didn’t fully form. Questions that were never asked, and therefore never answered.

There has always been a quiet sense of something missing. Not something overwhelming, but something persistent. The awareness that I had a father, yet never truly had the opportunity to know him—his values, his perspective, his creative voice. That absence has stayed with me in a subtle but meaningful way.

What the Poems Seemed to Say to Me

Based on the interpretation of these poems shared by the artist’s daughter—and my friend—Fei Wu, I began to receive them not as direct translations, but as reflections on life.

What I felt through them was this:

That life does not always resolve neatly.
That some relationships remain incomplete, yet still hold meaning.
That absence can shape us just as much as presence.

There also seemed to be a quieter message beneath the surface—that understanding does not always come at the time we expect it to.

Sometimes it arrives later, in fragments.
Through reflection.
Through unexpected encounters.
Through art.

And sometimes, even in silence, there is still a form of connection that continues. There was a moment when I felt a subtle emotional pull—as if something within me was reconnecting with a part of my past that I had not fully processed.

And it led me to a thought: perhaps this is one way I can connect with my father. Not through conversations we never had, but through something he understood deeply—art.

When Art Becomes a Messenger

What struck me most was not a similarity in style, but in spirit. The abstraction, emotional intensity, and lack of literal explanation reminded me of my father’s paintings. In a way, it felt like I was being given another chance to engage with something I had once overlooked or not fully understood—not because the two artists were the same, but because abstract and expressive art carries universal emotional truths.

This experience did not bring closure, nor did it need to. What it offered instead was a sense of connection—a reminder that relationships do not always end as we expect. Sometimes, they continue in quieter ways, through memory, reflection, and even through the work of another artist.

A Quiet Thread That Connects

In reflecting on all of this, I also found myself thinking about Fei and Xiang Li.

A daughter who understands her father’s work deeply enough to share it with others. An artist like Xiang Li, who continues that legacy in her own way—through her paintings that give voice and presence to the forgotten Chinese Empresses. And myself, someone who is still trying to understand her own father, long after he is gone.

These are different relationships, shaped by different experiences. And yet, in this moment, they felt connected.

Through art.
Through memory.
Through a shared human need to understand the people who came before us.

Holding the Feeling, Gently

I don’t know if my father was “speaking” to me through this experience. But I do know that, for a brief moment, I felt closer to him. Not through memory alone, but through a deeper understanding of the kind of expression he may have been reaching for in his own work.

And perhaps that is what art can do at its most meaningful. It allows us to reconnect—with others, with ourselves, and sometimes, with parts of our lives that we thought we had lost.

With quiet reflection,
Triptiji