In conversation with Peter Cavaciuti

We sat down with Peter Cavaciuti on a warm August afternoon to learn more about his passion for Chinese culture and art, as well as his journeys, both academic and physical. We gained invaluable insight into his journey, and learnt about a number of his future plans.

The first spark came to be during a trip to the British Museum at the young age of five. He fell in love with funerary sculptures from the era of the Tang dynasty during the second half of the first millennium.

From there, it grew and grew, and my uncle also encouraged me to buy small things in markets. I'd buy small things, not very valuable, but little bits of china and things like that.

Peter enjoys the simplicity of small items. One of the items he pointed out was a statue he bought at the age of fifteen, depicting a guardian offering up and ingot of gold, for a mere twenty-five pence. While experts did not value it highly, he sees it as a piece of treasure he stumbled upon.

He also started reading about ancient Chinese culture, including Chiang Yee's book on Chinese childhood and Lin Yutang.

Peter understood the complexity and complementary nature of Chinese art, philosophy and calligraphy. He studied philosophy with Master Liu, who taught him courses in Chinese philosophy, before gaining admission to study at SOAS, where he stumbled upon Brush Drawing in the Chinese Manner, written by his future teacher, Fei Cheng Wu. He was able to connect to Master Fei via a ceramics collector he had been studying with, however, Master Fei ignored Peter's letter at first, only taking him on a six-week trial period after the second one. 'Otherwise it would be a waste of his time and my money, and also there was the idea of a sort of spiritual connection.' Peter added. If the visit to the British Museum was the spark for Peter, being accepted as the student of Master Fei Cheng Wu was the real ignition.

Peter only later realised that studying with Fei Cheng Wu would not only be paying somebody, but embarking on a lifelong apprenticeship. Master Fei complemented the knowledge of Peter well, and made up for the shortfalls of his previous teachers. The experience humbled him.

'He put a painting in front of me, sometimes they weren't paintings I really liked, but I never said to him "I don't like that", but rather, "I don't understand it".

Master Fei would then proceed to explain the piece, going into detail why certain forms of brushwork or poetry were better than others, or how calligraphy related to the painting. Master Fei provided what his previous teachers, who were excellent in certain branches of Chinese art, but not others, could not: a holistic picture, or, in Peter's words, 'a totally new world'. He describes a key difference between Western art and Chinese art as the former being focused on self-expression and the latter on being guided. Peter remains grateful for the opportunity to understand how important Xu Beihong was to Master Fei through the numerous stories he heard about Master Xu and others: 'It was akin to somebody studying music: a good musician doesn't just study Chopin or Bach' Peter added. 'He was allowing me to be able to express myself, so he thought "this artist is good" for me, for my development, whereas others, Peter might not had been ready for at that time.

Master Fei applied academic rigour to the fullest. 'For the first two years when I was studying with him, I wasn't allowed to sit down next to him. I would have to stand and grind the ink, and he would sit and repaint things I didn't do well, the I would redo them.' Peter recounts. 'Each week, I would produce ten paintings, so I'd work all the time and show him before my lesson, which Master Fei then proceeded to critique. He also studied calligraphy at the time: every lesson was calligraphy first, then painting. Painting would consist of copying old masters, and painting from real life. Peter found this very important.

Peter studied with Master Fei for eight years intensively, continuing in Beijing in the Central Academy of Fine Arts later. They became friends, but never grew too close.

Learning Chinese painting was quite unusual in the 1970s. Aside from the 'Far Eastern Painting Society' in London, there were very few who were interested in this genre of art, however, this also gave Peter the opportunity to have a more intimate learning experience. 'Today, this is very, very difficult to find this kind of tuition' Peter added. This changed upon his visit to Beijing, where he experienced studying in more of a classroom-like setting. He worried that in Beijing, the busy capital of China, he would not get to see the mountains and landscapes he had been painting previously, but he was positively surprised. He fondly remembers the friendliness of people and the academic rigour of the Central Academy. To see famous sights, such as the Imperial Palace, that he had only seen on photographs, remains a wonderful memory for Peter. While in China, Peter travelled extensively: to the Nanhai Province, to Guilin, and Yunnan, the home of some of the rarest teas in the world.

Tea gave Peter's art more depth and flavour. He was drawn to Buddhism, and, a particular practice of tea, chado, which is originally a Japanese tea ceremony involving loose leaf tea, often sencha, and powdered green tea, or matcha. Peter sees tea as a form of self-expression and he is a certified tea master: the drink and the culture surrounding it has given him another viewpoint that he has used to give further depth and flavour to his art. He finds beauty in the movement of tea-related items and in the symmetry of a Japanese tea ceremony. Combined with the Buddhist idea of impermanence of the world, Peter's sincerity and compassion is easily tangible through his art.

Peter sees the main difference between Chinese and Western art in the formalised nature of the former and the forced realism in the latter. 'There are no shadows in Chinese painting and the fixed point perspective isn't used' he adds. 'Their use of the line; it's not like in western art where you're trying to describe something. A line in Chinese art is used as in and based on Chinese calligraphy, so it has to be fluid and it has to have movement, and be beautiful in itself.' The importance of language, of movement, of the constant fluidity and flux might sound unusual for those whose eyes are trained for accurate shadows the finest of details when it comes to capturing reality, yet, Chinese art is just another method of self-expression, deeply interwoven with the culture surrounding it. In Peter's words, Chinese people don't just look at a painting, but read it. Therefore, every line and every dot has to serve a purpose, and brushwork has to remain interesting.

To enable this level of detail, the materials, tools and techniques used in Chinese art are different as well. The brush is held differently, perpendicularly, and the choice of paper is just as important: it is absorbent, and more qualities and types of paper are available, such as the Indian khadi paper, Nepalese paper, Korean or Japanese paper. Peter uses different kinds of paper for different purposes. A major difference Peter emphasises is erasure: in Western watercolour, erasing is easy, in Chinese paintings, erasure is not allowed. Similarly, in Western art, one cannot use the other side of the paper to paint: in Chinese art, this is possible. Similarly, ink is different: he grew from liking pomo (splashed ink) but his teacher introduced him to gongbi, which strengthened his work. Overall, for Peter, Chinese techniques are the most difficult in the world.

As Chinese and Western cultures interact, so does art. Western artists, such as David Hockney, are starting to pay tribute to Chinese art. Moving perspectives and space perception has changed in the West over the recent years, which finds correspondence in Chinese art: for example, in Chinese scroll paintings, it is quite common to record space over multiple blocks of time, whereas this is only appearing now in Western art. There are also similarities in how art is changing, both in creation and perception, in China and the West: Peter tells us that in China, the best art was not produced by professional artists, but amateurs, who were less concerned with making money and more with expressing themselves. Today, artists in the West have more opportunities than ever to showcase their artwork thanks to the power of social media.

Peter has been exhibited on a number of occasions in the past, in Europe and in Asia - in the cities of Cambridge, Nanjing and others. He enjoys collaborating with other artists, from other genres of art as well, such as ceramicists or potters, as it leads to a more holistic form of self-expression and art exhibition. Curating pieces to be submitted and exhibited is a difficult process: he began with an iris, painted on subtle paper, and being accepted encouraged him to go one step further, and, for his next exhibition opportunity, he submitted two, then three pieces, which all got in. To be judged by someone more senior than himself was the ultimate goal of exhibition. Peter does not curate specifically for Chinese or non-Chinese audiences, but the cultural context has to be provided, and it has to be more extensive when showcasing Chinese art to a non-Chinese audience.

Since returning to the United Kingdom, Peter has become a teacher: he aims to preserve traditional approaches to Chinese art. Students have to display humility and eagerness to understand Chinese art, much like he did, approaching it step-by-step, with a meditative, philosophical approach. He focuses on reproducing the path that he had taken with Master Fei and others, so students of his can follow it as well: the focus is less on 'creating something from nothing' than on 'developing and producing something'. Students of his have had different tenures, and some have been with him for over thirty years. He has multiple generations of students, however, he would like to immerse children in the world of Chinese art as his next project. He sees a natural openness to art in them, making the Chinese painting method interesting to teach to children at the ages of 8-10.

Peter will soon start teaching again in the Cambridge Chinese Community Centre, in Chesterton starting this autumn, and he is one of the founders of the Cambridge Asian Culture Society, which aims to facilitate cultural exchanges thus enhancing the understanding of different cultures.