Storytellers in sand and stone

In the hushed halls of the Junsheng Sandstone Paintings Creative Space, the walls do not shimmer with oil paint or float in washes of ink. Touch the vividly colored works that line the white walls of the studio in Zhangjiajie, Central China's Hunan province, and your fingertip meets not smooth pigment but a coarse, warm, intricately layered texture.

From afar, one of the eye-catching works depicts the mist-shrouded, towering peaks of the local tourism hot spot, Tianmen Mountain (Heaven's Gate). Up close, the pinnacles reveal themselves as countless irregular natural stones, carefully arranged yet left unpolished.

Step before another work, where a rustic wooden-framed door stands slightly ajar. Push it open and a hidden world appears where stilt houses of the Tujia ethnic group nestle at the foot of the mountains, cooking smoke curling upward, and a placid river mirroring distant peaks.

"This piece is called Open the Door, See the Mountain," says Kong Jingping, co-founder of the studio.

"Many visitors say that closing the door means home, while opening it reveals poetry and distant horizons."

Look closely and the details emerge. Roof tiles are crafted from processed bamboo shoot husks. Haystacks are bundles of carefully cut fir bark. Pebbles in the riverbed are stones gathered and cleaned directly from nearby streams.

At Kong's studio, such visual and tactile wonders are everywhere. These works are known as sandstone paintings.

The art form uses quartz sandstone from local mountains as "pigment", bamboo shoot husks, tree bark, and moss as "brushes". Artists rely entirely on the natural colors and textures of these materials to create art that "uses nature to depict nature", Kong explains.

For nearly four decades, Kong and her partner Li Junsheng have transformed local sand into timeless art, inspired by ancient murals at Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, Northwest China's Gansu province.

In 1986, when Kong was decorating her new house, a mason casually sprinkled colored stone granules on the wall — some piled up like mountains and some spread like paths.

"I was amazed. Suddenly, I remembered the Dunhuang murals my teacher described in class," she recalls.

The Mogao Caves, a treasure house of Buddhist art, have held their colors for a millennium, thanks to the crushed minerals and plant binders that provide stability, and the dry air and deep caves that offer protection.

The wisdom of ancient artisans gave Kong a bold idea to bring silent grains of sand to life as paintings.

She and Li began experimenting. They gathered colored sand and stones, gluing them into simple patterns according to shape and hue. They sold them in Changsha, the provincial capital of Hunan.

"To our surprise, they were popular and brought us our first pot of gold," Kong says.

But these were mere crafts. The turning point came in 1988 when their path converged with Zhangjiajie's landscape.

During a sketching trip, standing before thousands of soaring peaks and seas of clouds, Kong was overwhelmed. "We must 'place' this beauty into our sandstone paintings for the whole world to see," she recalls.

Turning that vision into reality required both artistic ambition and technical breakthroughs.

"The biggest challenge was the adhesive. Early chemical glues would deteriorate or discolor, preventing the works from lasting," she notes.

After years of countless trials, the two successfully developed a stable composite adhesive, laying the foundation for sandstone paintings to evolve from tourist souvenirs into collectible art.

Their work also benefited from Zhangjiajie's rapidly growing tourism industry.

In 1992, UNESCO experts evaluating the local Wulingyuan scenic area for World Natural Heritage status saw the sandstone paintings and praised them highly. After Wulingyuan was inscribed, the art born from the landscape unexpectedly became one of Zhangjiajie's earliest cultural ambassadors.

Their paintings started selling in the United States, Japan and South Korea, as well as across Southeast Asia.

In 2001, they decisively moved their base from Changsha to Zhangjiajie, founding a sandstone painting institute.

"All our colors come from the earth," she says.

Autumn tones, for instance, may come from sand or natural cinnabar.

A piece titled Auspicious East Wind is composed entirely of rare cinnabar granules, producing a deep vermilion glow under light that symbolizes good fortune.

Sun Jianjun, former researcher at the Chinese National Academy of Arts, says it makes the art uniquely natural and profoundly meaningful, with strong collectible value.

That value is also visual. The two artists have integrated the compositional principles and negative space of Chinese painting, the perspective and chiaroscuro of Western art, and the layered dimensionality of woodcut prints.

Creating a sandstone painting requires "abandoning the brush for the hand", using actions like "sprinkling, spreading, pressing, and stacking" to converse with materials, Kong says.

"Winter scenes are the most challenging, as achieving the right thickness and evenness of snow relies entirely on touch, with each piece taking 15 days to complete," she elaborates.

Figurative subjects can take six months, using minute granules to capture expression. A portrait of an elderly woman reveals wrinkles and a kind gaze formed by cleverly layered grains of varying shades.

Kong says traditional craft can also be high-end and sophisticated on the strength of modern technology.

"We invest 4.3 percent of our annual revenue in research and development," she says.

The team holds more than 10 national patents. A key innovation is resin-like gel that makes works lighter, crack-resistant and easier to ship internationally, while also allowing textures similar to oil painting or ink wash.

To solve issues of cracking or molding in different climates, they upgraded backings to specially treated wood panels covered with canvas.

With its unique artistic language and consistent quality, sandstone painting has found a clear position in the international market.

"South Korean groups make up one-third of our visitors. They prefer bright, auspicious themes symbolizing prosperity," Kong says.

Thus, floral series and scroll paintings for easy transport were developed. A sunflower piece blending sandstone techniques with Korean aesthetic sensibilities has become a consistent best-seller.

Southeast Asia is another loyal market. Collectors from Singapore and Thailand often favor intricate figurative works.

To promote cultural exchange more systematically, Kong made a major decision to build the creative studio that opened in 2017. It houses distinctive sandstone works, alongside interactive zones where visitors can create their own artworks under guidance.

She has also expanded into cultural products like tea trays, coasters, and ambient lamps crafted from sliced natural sandstone.

Yet, even as the art form gained commercial success, its pioneers began to feel a quiet unease.

"In our current creative work, I myself have encountered a bottleneck," Kong admits.

While the paintings are popular for their realism and texture, she worries that responding too closely to market demand may limit artistic expression.

In recent years, she has collaborated with artists from institutions like the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.

"I want to absorb purer artistic styles from them," she says.

Kong has also sought collaboration with the Dunhuang Academy, in an effort to draw new nutrients from ancient Eastern aesthetic roots.

"I even want to remodel part of our space to resemble a cave," she says.

To her, a cave is where the ancient murals live: quiet, dark and patient.

After 40 years of creating sandstone works and welcoming visitors from home and abroad, Kong now finds herself drawn back to that beginning, to see what new ideas grow in the dark.

Contact the writer at yangfeiyue@chinadaily.com.cn