Tzu-chi Yeh’s paintings have always combined composition that has a strongly contemporary feel to it with an air of classical elegance. Over a period of nearly six decades of learning and self-cultivation that spanned both Chinese and Western culture (Yeh having lived in Taiwan until he was nearly thirty, before spending just under two decades in the West, and then spending the last few years back in Taiwan), Yeh’s artistic training and spiritual cultivation has displayed a high degree of cross-cultural depth and breadth. Born in the town of Yuli in the Hua-tung Rift Valley in Eastern Taiwan, Yeh grew up surrounded by mountains. Yeh’s father, who was born in the last years of the Qing Dynasty, was a highly-cultured man with a love of traditional Chinese painting, calligraphy and poetry. Deeply influenced by his father, Tzu-chi Yeh displayed considerable talent at Chinese painting and calligraphy from a young age, while also developing an in-depth knowledge of Chinese poetry and prose; he was able to appreciate the philosophical underpinnings of traditional Chinese landscape painting. Yeh’s own landscape paintings, with their combination of rational exploration and emotional expression, embody the immense power that can be achieved by positioning oneself at the shifting border between Chinese and Western art.

The phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty once said that “the depth of a painting is not the automatic product of perspective or photographic realism; it must be the result of struggle, a symbolic icon that goes against the foundations of reality.” Seeking depth in his paintings has always been one of Tzu-chi Yeh’s goals. Through a process of creating layered washes, Yeh establishes a sense of depth that arises out of the colors used in the painting; whether bright and exuberant or dark and gloomy, Yeh’s paintings are always in a state of transformation. The way Tzu-chi Yeh approaches the structure of his paintings is different from that of most realist artists. Yeh’s construction of realism derives from the inherent “codes” of nature, like a distant, primitive echo, an invisible source of artistic inspiration that reawakens a magic that had long since disappeared. In Yeh’s painting “Mist . Lao River . Hualien,” the line of mountain peaks and the border of the drifting mist are fused with a soft light that penetrates the forested hills to create a faint corona effect. Employing the classical technique of using curved lines to delineate space, Yeh succeeds in creating a sense of boundless distance; the viewer of the painting is drawn into the heart of mystery, into a world that is both real and fantastical, the aesthetic significance of which can be interpreted in many different ways. The multi-layered fantastical vision that Yeh creates is full of constant change. Time moves within space; space dance with light and shadow. Everywhere there are hidden treasures and surprises that ensure one never tires of viewing the painting anew.

In the work of Tzu-chi Yeh, we see the authentic Taiwanese landscape, and we see the beauty of this landscape in a way that has never been seen before – a deeply-rooted vitality and natural beauty. We also see the steadfastness of Yeh’s faith in the power of painting, and the strength of his feelings for the land where he grew up. Yeh is like a pilgrim chanting his prayers as he walks through the mountains, or a travel intoning verse as he gazes out to sea; he is wholly focused on the search for dialog between himself and nature, and on exploring the limitless potential of the artistic soul.

Text by Kin Tsuei Chang (former Acting Dean, Graduate Institute of the Indigenous Arts, National Dong Hwa University)