In Ode to the Mighty Peak, Peng Kanglong works in a color palette dominated by blue and green harkening back to the blue-green landscape of Tang Dynasty artists such as Zhan Ziqian (fl. late 6th c.), Li Sixun (651 – 716), and the latter’s son Li Zhaodao (early 8th c.). In Chinese art, blue and green symbolize the ever-verdant Land of Daoist Immortals and in Ode to the Mighty Peak, Peng Kanglong effectively combines this Tang Daoist ideal of immortality and eternity with the Song Confucian ideal of cosmic and social centrality and order.

The central form of the composition is an upright oval or “U” shape; its left side is rendered in a calm jade green and its right in a cool blue deepened with black ink. Behind this central form, Peng Kanglong paints in dilute layers of warmer cerulean blue a mountain valley of forest mists woven through upright trees, rising and receding into the far-left corner. We find Peng Kanglong’s eponymous “Mighty Peak” at the end of the central form’s right column wreathed in vibrant pink peony blooms—two of which peek out from behind the vertical spires! With this one surprising juxtaposition, Peng Kanglong turns his “Mighty Peak” into a “Mighty Garden Rock” and magically transforms the distance between you and his central, sculptural form from very far to very near.

In front of his towering rock sculpture, Peng Kanglong paints three different plants—all in ink—rising on three spindly stems: a blossoming plum (right), a stemmed agave or related succulent (middle) and what looks like a flowering magnolia with russet and white blooms (left)—a fantastic combination unprecedented in either horticulture or Chinese flower painting. Peng Kanglong then echoes his three plant stems with three equally spindly stone legs which hold up his tripod-like garden rock. This precarious, physics-defying form evokes the fantastical mountain forms of the Ming Dynasty painter of Buddhist figures and monumental landscapes Wu Bin (c. 1543–c. 1626). In this way, Peng Kanglong transforms yet again our experience of his central, rocky spire from garden rock back to precipitous mountain peak.

To settle the matter—or perhaps not—Peng Kanglong sets his entire compositional assembly on a tilted ground plane rendered in pingyuan or “level distance” perspective. As your eye travels across the foreground rocks and water you pass through the spindly legs of the rocky tripod to the receding river rocks beyond. Beyond these rocks on the right edge of the painting, extending vertically to the middle of the composition, Peng Kanglong leaves a most peculiar strip of kongbai or “white space” that reveals a continuation of “level distance” perspective over a reflective body of water—a river or lake—otherwise blocked from our view by the central, rocky mass. From the far shore then rises the foothills and high mountain valley that support and embrace from behind all of the central elements of the composition. 

Despite all of these unexpected shifts and twists in perspective and distance, Ode to the Mighty Peak, in the end, works perfectly as a grand and unified space. This unprecedented composition—surprising and unexpected and yet supremely rational—underscores the latent possibilities of combining the near distance and shallow depth of flower painting with the far distance and shifting perspective of the Chinese landscape.

在《隆崇赋》中，彭康隆使用了以蓝绿为主的色调，仿佛回到唐代的青绿山水，代表画家有展子虔（活跃于公元6世纪末）、李思训（651-716年）及其子李昭道（公元8世纪初）等。在中国艺术中，蓝色和绿色象征着永恒的道教仙境，而在《隆崇赋》中，彭康隆巧妙地将唐代道所追求的不朽和永恒，与宋代儒家所推崇的宇宙和社会的中心性与秩序结合在一起。