In a conversation with the architect C. Y. Lee, Shiy De-jinn said, “In Chinese painting, artists must reach their seventies or eighties in order to produce their most outstanding piece of work. This is particularly true for the art of calligraphy, that one can never reach one’s peak until ‘the person and the work are both in maturity’. This is something that does not exist in the work of Western artists. I think Chinese people value personal cultivation and exaltation, which is an extremely sublime state. Lastly, one has to be immense, humble, vigorous, hidden and modest, giving the viewer a sudden shock and a transient stimulus.”

At the last stage of his life, Shiy focused on exploring ink wash with his strong personal style. He had received training in traditional craft, Western sketches, oil painting, pastel, and watercolor when he was young, creating a place for himself in the art scene. As he got older, he began to realize that his ultimate concern should be his own life experience. Having spent his whole life striving for innovation in painting, in his later years Shiy found that his work had reached a new level of maturity, while at the same time maintaining a high degree of diversification. The landscapes that Shiy De-jinn painted during this period are unrivaled by any other Chinese artist.

In the biography of Shiy, Cheng Hui-mei writes, “The exploration of modern Chinese painting allowed him to establish ‘Taiwan landscapes, Chinese concepts’–his unique style in watercolor. Watercolor and ink wash became two sides of the same coin. His exploration of ink wash accomplished his unique style of watercolor, while his achievement in watercolor also revealed the spark of ink wash.”

In the 1970s, Shiy De-jinn began taking Taiwanese landscapes as subject-matter for his paintings, applying traditional Chinese ink-brush painting techniques to the depiction of these landscapes. Shiy felt that conventional Chinese landscape painting lacked a sense of presence; he advocated a direct contact with nature, and the need to paint from life. Shiy once commented that “I have never shut myself away in a room to paint; what I paint is the landscapes that I see before me.” Shiy sought to create landscape paintings that would have a modern feel to them, a sense of modernity that would transcend national boundaries, and he felt that this could only be achieved by painting directly from life. Both Shiy’s Taiwanese landscapes and his paintings of human scenes reflect a strong attachment to Taiwan.

Mountain Houyan is located in Miaoli County, Taiwan. The hills take their name “Landscape of Mountain Houyan” from their distinctive appearance, resembling tongues of flame rising up into the air. Shiy’s painting of the hills was painted from a valley-bottom, looking up at the peaks. As depicted by Shiy, the steep, rocky hillsides resemble a mysterious world of gold, while the trees with their autumnal foliage at the foot of the hills give off a warm, orangeyellow glow, and a small boat silently floats along on the stream in the center of the canvas. The painting as a whole has the same magnificent beauty as a Japanese ukiyoe snow painting. The adoption of new subject matter, new forms of composition, and a new artistic conception, combined with Shiy’s keen observation and powerful brushstrokes, helped to instill new vitality into the Chinese ink-brush painting tradition.