Chinese brush painting is a discipline of subtraction. A branch is described in as few strokes as the subject allows, the paper is left to do the work of air and distance, and the pressure of the brush carries everything that shading would carry in a Western drawing. Chinese Branch is drawn in that manner, with the watery, transparent quality of ink laid on absorbent paper.
What this produces on a wall is unusual: a design with very little in it that nonetheless does not read as plain. Branches cross the surface at intervals with long open passages between them, so most of the wall is empty and the eye is given a great deal of rest. It is closer in feeling to a hung silk panel than to a repeating wallpaper.
It is a wide-width design, which suits it, since fewer joins means fewer interruptions to a composition built on open space and the branches can travel further before meeting a seam. The obvious rooms are the quiet ones: a bedroom, a bathroom, a room for sitting in at the end of the day. Plain matting, low furniture and unlined curtains complete it; anything busy destroys the effect entirely.
