Seeing Color Through Time
Rooted in early Chinese mural traditions, Chinese mineral-pigment painting employs mineral-based color systems that underwent major development and reached a high degree of sophistication from the 2nd century BCE through the 10th century CE, spanning the Han through Tang dynasties. These techniques are most notably preserved in monumental sites such as the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang, where mineral pigments were used extensively in ritual and narrative murals. The tradition emphasizes the inherent qualities of natural materials and their enduring visual presence over time.
Finely ground natural minerals—such as azurite and malachite—are applied in carefully layered stages rather than blended, allowing light to pass through crystalline particles and create surfaces of quiet luminosity and depth. The process values patience, material presence, and the passage of time.
Mineral-Pigment Painting: Matter, Light, and Time
How material becomes time—and how time becomes visible.
Mineral-pigment painting is grounded in finely milled natural minerals such as azurite and malachite, whose crystalline structures give color both material weight, optical depth, and long-term stability. Rather than blending pigments, the artist builds color through successive layers, allowing light to refract, reflect, and scatter between mineral particles. This interaction produces subtle shifts in luminosity that change with distance and angle. The surface retains visible traces of its making—granular textures, organic variations, and fine fissures—creating a tactile presence where material, light, time, and durability quietly converge.
In contemporary practice, mineral-pigment painting offers a renewed way of seeing—where ancient technique meets modern expression, inviting stillness, attentiveness, and lasting visual pleasure.
About the Artist
Lili Yu
Working within a slow, deliberate rhythm of time, the artist Lili Yu allows her paintings to emerge through gradual accumulation. Layer by layer, mineral pigments are built and settled, becoming a material record of sustained contemplation. Through this process, reflections on the cosmos, space, time, and the human perception of the world are quietly absorbed into the surface. Rather than seeking immediacy, the works cultivate depth through patience, forming images that feel both serene and expansive. The resulting paintings possess a calm, enduring presence—where material, thought, and time converge toward a sense of lasting stillness.
If oil painting captures emotion through movement, and acrylic emphasizes immediacy, mineral-pigment painting reveals time itself—built layer by layer, grain by grain.
