This watercolor painting – “Chinese Flowering Crabapple” – is a beautiful work that demonstrates Shiy De-jinn’s expert mastery of both Chinese and Western painting styles. The verdant leaves exude vitality; Shiy employs a combination of calligraphic and painting brush techniques to present flowers, branches and leaves as a complementary, unified whole, giving new life, and new creativity, to the traditional Chinese flower painting genre. In praising Shiy’s work, the poet and artist Lo Ch’ing commented that: “Of all the many artists who paint in watercolors, Shiy De-jinn displays the most variation in style, and his work gives the best picture of how Taiwanese art has evolved over the past three decades.” Shiy succeeded in transforming the monochrome “rhythm” of traditional Chinese ink-brush painting into a color “rhythm,” combining this with careful composition based on deep contemplation, and with deep, powerful brushstrokes, to create work that exudes mastery of his art.