Welcome to Shitao's Corner of the Web

My name doesn't matter --- what matters is the monk whose name I borrowed for this page. Shitao (石涛, "stone wave"), born Zhu Ruoji around 1642, was a painter who spent most of his life wandering as an itinerant Buddhist monk before he ever picked up a brush the way history remembers him. He wrote the single strangest, best treatise on painting I have ever read, and this page exists so I have somewhere to put what I have learned from it. I built it the way pages used to be built: by hand, one tag at a time, with nothing running behind the scenes.

Where to go from here

• About the monk --- his life, and the single brushstroke his whole treatise turns on.
• Gallery --- six paintings, on loan from museums that were kind enough to let the whole world keep them.
• Guestbook --- sign it, if you passed through.
• Webring & links --- the small ring of sites this page belongs to.

"The method of no method is the perfect method." --- from the treatise, more or less. See the about page for the long version.