Simply Sitting in the Sun

Simply Sitting in the Sun

Acrylic portrait & catalyst piece for the "Until Only the Mountain Remains" series

Li Po sits with a teacup in hand, caught in a shaft of dramatic light. No gesture, no grand narrative, just a man in the sun, unhurried. It's a quiet painting doing a big thing: marking the moment before everything else falls away and only the essential is left.

This piece is where the series Until Only the Mountain Remains begins, a body of work using the mountain as a silent witness across human history, drawn from the closing lines of Li Po's poem:

Now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,

until only the mountain remains.

Li Po (c. 701–762), also known as Li Bai or by his courtesy name Taibai, was a Chinese poet acclaimed as one of the greatest and most influential figures of the Tang dynasty — and of Chinese poetry as a whole.

Simply Sitting in the Sun

850 x 850mm

Acrylic Paint on Canvas

2026

Canvas-Stretch Frame

R22,500