OVERVIEW
Date: Apr 10, 2010 – May 2, 2010
Venue: 99 Degrees Art Center (Shanghai, China)
Artist(s): Chiu Hsiente, Jiang Zhixin, Li Suntta, Lo Shyh-Charng
Organizer: 99 Degrees Art Center (Shanghai, China)

Taiwan has inherited the great Chinese cultural legacy, and given its exceptional historical circumstances and the impact of numerous foreign influences on its culture, it has produced a number of outstanding artists. The artistic climate in Taiwan features great diversity, and the tremendous creativity that it fosters is giving its artists a dynamic presence in the international scene.

We can roughly divide these artists into two groups: The outstanding new talents are those developing artists who have already shown great potential, while the classic artists we present are those whose art has already achieved a significant degree of success and international recognition. On this basis we present these artists in two groups, the better to introduce to an international audience these outstanding artists of Taiwan.

OVERVIEW
Date: Nov 28, 2009 – Dec 22, 2009
Venue: 99 Degrees Art Center (Shanghai, China)
Artists: Chen Hsientung, Chiu Hsiente, Hou Liren, Lo Shyh-Charng, Zhang Zhexiong
Organizer: 99 Degrees Art Center (Shanghai, China)

Lo realized that only by eliminating the dross and retaining the essentials could article come to reveal true feeling. He thus strives to derive simplicity from complexity, reducing his compositions to the purest colors and the most simplified scenic elements, and by so doing, he captures a sense of the beauty of purity and simplicity. Lo’s work exudes a tranquil yet elegant air, reflecting the inner personal development of the artist himself and his spirit of humanism. An artist is like a seeker after truth, and in Lo’s works we hear the echo of his eternal pledge to nature. In them, he opens a window away from the everyday world, and we are greeted by a bracing gust of fresh Canadian air. Fatigue is washed away as our eyes take in the pure beauty of his natural scenes, and our spirit is refreshed as if by the gushing of a live, flowing spring.

OVERVIEW
Date: Sep 18, 2009 – Oct 11, 2009
Venue: 99 Degrees Art Center (Shanghai, China)
Artist: Lo Shyh-Charng
Organizer: 99 Degrees Art Center (Shanghai, China)

While some of the works have come from the artists’ personal inventories, others have been created especially for the show. It’s a rare glimpse into a medium not often associated with this line-up of artists. “Drawn Together” runs in conjunction with Vancouver’s first-ever drawing festival, ‘DRAWN 2009’ and it is with special delight that we showcase the works of artists so unique to one another, yet all connected by a common thread in drawing. “Drawn Together” begins with a panel discussion on Thursday, July 30 at 3pm with a reception to follow from 4pm to 6pm. All artists will be in attendance and the public are encouraged to attend.

OVERVIEW
Date: Jul 3, 2009 – Aug 14, 2009
Venue: Art Beatus Gallery (Vancouver, Canada)
Artist(s): Katie Cheung, Taiga Chiba, Tomoyo Ihaya, Junichiro Iwase, Shyh-Charng Lo
Organizer: Art Beatus Gallery (Vancouver, Canada)

“Build your hut amid human habitations, but don’t be bothered by the noise of cart and horse.” Shyh-charng Lo’s old-style Vancouver home is nothing like Tao Qian’s thatched hut, but it is situated on a busy thoroughfare leading from the City Centre to the University of British Columbia. Inside, the first floor living room doubles as Shyh-charng’s painting studio. His paintings in various stages of completion spill over into the adjacent dining area, are propped up against the simple, almost rustic, furniture, or packed into each available nook and cranny. And of course the walls are all adorned with his own works.

Earth-Sky-Water: the most basic elements that Shyh-Charng brings to life in his paintings

Every day, like a traditional Chinese scholar recluse, retired in his case from Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, Shyh-charng sits there on an old wooden chair facing a blank or partly covered canvas imbued with a deep desire to create something new, to express his emotional responses to the surrounding scenes of everyday life. His mind and heart are not detached, in Tao Qian’s sense, from the scene outside his window, but rather dwelling in the natural scene that he loves so much: the gnarled old dead tree in the middle of his front yard, the bamboos in the left corner, the pine trees near and far, the yellow walls, brown roofs and red brick chimneys of houses further down the hill, the many colored waters of Spanish Banks and English Bay, and, looming up on the other side of the water, the North Vancouver hills and the distant mountains thrusting into the sky. Earth-Sky-Water: the most basic elements that Shyh-charng brings to life in his paintings.

Shyh-charng’s style has often been compared to Chinese scholar or literati painting from Su Dong-pa to Dong Qi-chang. Shyh-charng is certainly not like these traditional icons of Chinese art history to the extent that they posed as gifted amateurs and attempted to avoid any suggestion of mere professionalism. Although largely self-taught, Shyh-charng is a professional through and through. Shyh-charng’s work is very much like his illustrious forebears, however, in that he conceives of his paintings as “an expression of genuine inner feeling” in response to nature or everyday life or, in his words again, as “an artistically transformed diary.”

Genuine emotion, suggestiveness, and a not altogether obvious sense of life

Genuine emotion, suggestiveness, and a not altogether obvious but nevertheless powerful sense of life are the hallmarks of Shyh-charng’s works. Although his paintings depict real places and things, they are artistically transformed to carry the imprint of Shyh-charng’s individual talent and true feelings. To borrow the words of the famous art historian Michael Sullivan apropos Chinese scholar painting, Shyh-charng’s landscapes are “enjoyable as landscapes” and “draw us into nature and make us one with it” even as they paradoxically avoid accurate representation and depict feelings about nature that are at once intensely personal and extremely universal.

rich green trees in the foreground, lighter life-green hills behind the trees, pale blue water in the middle distance, half-dark blue mountains directly opposite, with a band of Shyh-charng-blue

My wife and I are fortunated enough to have two of Shyh charng’s early landscapes on our walls. Both of them are quintessential Shyh-charng style combinations of scene and emotion: rich green trees in the foreground, lighter life-green hills behind the trees, pale blue water in the middle distance, half-dark blue mountains directly opposite, with a band of Shyh-charng-blue (how else can one describe it?) sky on the top of the canvas at the farthest distance from the viewer. To gaze upon these scenes is to be immediately drawn into a realm of calm tranquillity evoked by the marvelously transmemetic expression of Shyh-charng’s unique feelings for the particular natural scene outside his window. Every time we enter into these paintings we feel a deep sense of connectedness and wholeness that helps us, too, to avoid being “bothered by the noise of cart and horse” on the busy street outside. At the same time, paradoxically, we are also exhilarated by the powerful life force emanating from just under the surface placidity of every detail of the scene. Like Tao Qian of old, I “would like to explain this more fully, but I’ve forgotten the words” It is much more fitting that I simply invite you to experience for yourselves the power of this new collection of Shyh-charng’s paintings.

Dr. Michael S. Duke, Ph.D.
Professor of Chinese, University of British Columbia

Among the Chinese painters who I came to know during the latest several years, Shyh-Charng Lo is one of those who made the deepest impression on me. He is humble, reticent, generous, and has devoted all his energy and talent to his art. He is an extremely sincere and hard-working painter. But his journey toward artistic expression has been extremely long and difficult — quite worthy of our understanding and respect.

Shyh-Charng Lo was born in 1945 in Nagano, the famous beautiful winter resort in the west central part of Japan. At the age of one, he followed his parents back to their native district of Hsin-chu, not far south of Taipei. From an early age he already showed artistic talent, for when he was still in second grade in primary school he won first prize in the Hsin-chu District Student Art Competition. But all along, besides studying under some art teachers in both primary and high school, he is not known to have worked under any famous artists. Extraordinarily, even though he did not have his parents’ encouragement, he kep winning prizes through his school years. When he was ready for college, he gained admission to National Taiwan University, the highest-ranked education institution in Taiwan at that time. In those day at the National Taiwan University there was no art or art history as majors of study, so he chose the field of archaeology and anthropology instead of art as his major subject, since it was the closest to art. In the meantime, his paintings were selected to participate in the prestigious Tai-yang Exhibition, Taipei City Art Exhibition, and the National Art Exhibition. This proves that his interest and skill in art began very early in his life and went through all his school and college years. These were his own accomplishments in his formative years.

From archaeology and anthropology he would be able to take a long view of the whole human history and culture to come to understand the importance of human life and art

To Shyh-Charng Lo, archaeology and anthropology are fields of study quite well related to art, since, from them, he would be able to take a long view of the whole human history and culture to come to understand the importance of human life and art. As a result, from National Taiwan University he went to do graduate studies in anthropology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. After receiving his master’s degree, he moved to Toronto to further his museum training at the University of Toronto, later on working at the Royal Ontario Museum. From the point of view of his background this was quite a logical development for his career, attaining the goal of his lifelong pursuit. This was a job that led to a deeper understanding of the universe, the world, human life, and his own life-long pursuit.

However, after working for a decade at the museum and his many years of painting in his spare time, his love of art since childhood soon grew so strongly that it formed a strong inner urge to become a full-time artist. Thus he decided to leave the job at the Royal Ontario Museum to devote all his time and energy to painting. This was a very bold decision, especially for someone like him who had been so well trained in the field. But from the point of view of his deep interest in humanity and the world, it was a logical step. Since he had already gained a basic understanding of the development of human history and culture, the next step should be more introspective, returning to his own mind, in the hope of looking into his own inner feeling as a way to further discover the mystery of human life and art.

As a result, in 1989, after leaving his job at the museum in Toronto, he and his family moved 3,000 miles west across Canada and bought a house near the UBC campus in Vancouver. Surrounded by a garden of trees and flowers, he could see from the big window of his living room and studio English Bay, the tall buildings of downtown, and mountains beyond. Taking different angles, he could see the beautiful bays of Vancouver and the sea beyond. With this environment, he dedicated himself totally to his artistic creation. In the morning, he worked on his oil paintings and in the afternoon he did his lithography. Everyday he watched sunrise and sunset and the changes during the day showing a myriad of images for his artwork. The changing of the seasons and the windy and rainy and sometimes even snowy scenes gave him endless inspiration for his paintings and prints. What is unique in his approach is that just from his window he can paint endless views of nature. This source of his inspiration seems to be inexhaustible.

Like a majority of modern artists, his creative process always begins in nature, in mountains and water and in scenes of fields and trees. Gradually he simplifies his scenes, sometimes seen only in vague outliens and sometimes to the point of almost abstraction. However, he never takes the step into pure abstraction, since in every painting, he always maintains some outlines of objects, especially mountains and water. They look, like some Chinese artists used to say, between life-like and unlike. This is like what he said, “In the present stage of my pursuit I am using my paint brush to transmit the ‘scenes’ from everyday life that I see to the ‘feeling’ that they evoke inside me.” The emphasis here is on feeling, not actual objects. Thus his paintings are not intended to capture actual scenes in nature, but pursue the essence of his feeling for them.

Everything seems to be appearing and disappearing, going directly into the hearts of the observers

As he has said before, in his creative process his biggest effort lies in the handling of basic artistic elements such as dots, lines, surfaces, colours, and textures. However, after he has achieved his own personal style of expression, all these elements gradually disappear into his own unified style. As the Chinese have said, it is like “a heavenly dress showing no sign of individual stitches,” with everything melting into a new style, without showing dots and lines, original colours and textures. Everything seems to be appearing and disappearing, going directly into the hearts of the observers.

In exploring the deep feeling implied in the almost abstract depiction of nature, Shyh-Charng Lo always maintains a basic reference to actual scenes without going into pure abstraction. Modern abstract art in the West, starting from the early twentieth century, had several branches: One, beginning from Kandinsky, attempted to simplify nature into abstract patterns, sometimes all the way to pure abstraction. Another branch, starting from Mandarin, went into straight lines, surfaces, and pure geometrical forms without any reference to nature. A third branch began with Paul Klee, in transforming figures and objects into extremely simplified forms and then reconstituting them into new compositions according to his own imagination. Shyh-Charng Lo does not seem to have followed any of these Western trends in abstraction. Rather, he seems to have been influenced by the expressionist trend exemplified by Matisse, Bonnard, and Vuillard, with an emphasis on feeling for people, objects, and scenes through dots, lines, and textures rendered in near abstract manner. However, no matter how close he comes to abstraction, he always retains some basic reference to nature. It is a form of expressionism.

His paintings attain the “realm of Chan (Zen) and the state of emptiness”

Basically, the paintings of Shyh-Charng Lo, even though using oil painting and lithography as his major media to express his inner feelings, share something in common with traditional Chinese literati painting. Literati painting has always been the expression of the Chinese literati who are poets, writers, and scholars and who can paint and write to express their inner feeling. Their works are mainly landscapes, not always in realistic depiction, but rather in some kind of transformation of nature to express their inner feeling. Shyh-Charng Lo’s works share the Chinese literati’s spirit. Li Lin-tsan has pointed out that his paintings have the characteristic of “a quiet approach to reach something far beyond,” a traditional Chinese approach. Peng Tse-chih also pointed out that his paintings attain the “realm of Chan (Zen) and the state of emptiness.” Both of these are attempts to show that Lo’s approach is very close to that of the traditional Chinese literati.

However, Lo’s approach does not follow the traditional literati course to reach his goal. Rather, he attained his present stage of artistic development through the world view of archaeology and anthropology plus the explorations of various theories of modern Western art. He uses Western oil painting and rich colours as the means to search for the mystery of the human spirit. This kind of exploration attempts to explore the mystery of human life by means of oil painting and lithography. It is neither pure Western nor traditional Chinese. Indeed, it is a combination of both the Chinese literati tradition and Western modernism into a unified expression of his own.

By Chu-Tsing Li, 2003