MOUNTAIN PEAKS IN THE CLOUDS

YU CHENG-YAO

An artist of almost legendary status, Yu Cheng-yao had no formal art training, and belonged to no particular school of painting; through constant travelling, study, poetry composition, calligraphy practice, declamation and study of music, he succeeded in becoming, towards the end of his life, the creator of a series of awe-inspiring, mystical landscape paintings. Yu Cheng-yao strove to realize something more than the conventional representational techniques of traditional Chinese painting; he sought to portray the reality of the underlying structure of the landscape, creating real landscapes characterized by serried peaks, complex shading, spontaneity and a down-to-earth simplicity of expression. The inspiration for Yu Cheng-yao's landscape paintings came from his memories of travelling across the imposing mountain ranges of Northwest and Southwest China. His incredible memory allowed him to recreate majestic, beautiful scenes that leave the viewer open-mouthed with admiration. Having had no-one to tutor him in painting, and no formal academic training in the arts, Yu took nature itself as his teacher; taking as his subject matter the countless famous mountains and great rivers that he had seen during the course of his travels in China and in Taiwan, Yu employed a finely detailed texturing technique and his own unique artistic lexicon and compositional style to create dozens of visually striking landscape paintings that have a pronounced emotional impact on the viewer.

This particular work by Yu Cheng-yao features a range of mountain peaks in distance, with a dense composition in which the mountains seem to press hard against one another. The foreground depicts secluded valleys, portrayed in a smooth, flowing style. The combination of soft shading and vigorous texturing brings across the majesty of the mountain peaks, along with an inspiring sense of vitality. Viewed as a whole, the painting demonstrates a skillful variation in brushwork techniques that creates a layered, dense landscape; the rocks in particular seem imbued with a sense of power that is quite striking. The "threedimensionality" of Yu Cheng-yao's landscapes is one of the most entrancing features of his work. Yu himself believed that this three-dimensionality derived from his passion for traditional nanguan music, in which multiple parts merge to form a coherent ensemble structure. Yu's combination of long and short brushstrokes, consistently firm and precise, creates a richly-textured pattern of rocks and trees; within each carefully composed scene, the artist takes pains to bring across the earthy simplicity of the landscape and its raw power.