Flying White

Named for feibai, "flying white" — the dry-brush stroke where bristles split and paper shows through. A first figurative piece, coded in JavaScript and worked backwards from photos of Mount Tamalpais, pistache trees and old Chinese brush paintings. Made under pressure, algorithm and plot in one weekend, for Red Pistache, a Los Altos show on its pistache trees in fall.

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Flying White in a black frame and white mat: a dashed mountain ridge at left, two black trees with red dotted foliage at right, a small red shrub in the lower left corner

I set myself a challenge. A pen plotter, two acrylic markers, only simple lines. Could I build a landscape from those building blocks? I drew inspiration from Chinese calligraphy and painting, the singular plotted gardens of generative artist Zancan, and California's mountains and trees. Above all the pistache and its glorious red. There's literally one in my front yard.

Close detail of an ink handscroll: boulders at the foot of two pine trunks, their outlines drawn in dry, streaked strokes where the paper shows through the ink — Flying white in the rocks. Zhao Mengfu, *Twin Pines, Level Distance* (detail), ca. 1310. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, public domain.

Pen plotter carriage holding a red paint marker over a drawing of black tree trunks, laying red dots into the canopy

Gallery wall in the Red Pistache exhibition: Flying White framed at lower left beside a framed watercolor of a girl with red flowers, under a large painting of red branches on pale blue

Chris De Giere
Acrylic paint marker on paper
Plotter drawing
9×12 inches (22.86 × 30.48 cm), framed 12×15 inches
2026

Exhibited in Red Pistache, Los Altos Community Center, Los Altos, CA, September 1, 2026 – January 4, 2027

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