In “The Reformers of Traditional Chinese Painting over the Last 100 Years,” Shiy De-jinn writes, “To respect Chinese painting is to bring it back into the reality of life in front of us, giving it new lifeblood. Searching for a new subject, a new composition, and a new concept, we blend watercolor into ink wash painting, bringing new vitality to the color of Chinese painting.” (Artist Magazine, November, 1980)

“His brushwork and ink are Chinese, his composition is modern, his emotion resides in his people, and his life is in Taiwan.” Some summarize Shiy’s concept of artistic creation in these four sentences, while the colored ink of “Sandbank at the Shore” is the exact realization of such an interpretation. He depicts Taiwan’s local landscape with Chinese colored ink and a classic, elegant and modern style.

Shiy loved taking photos in his free time and often created his work through a photographic perspective by using trichotomy, a simple composition concept. The central image of the piece is the yellow tree in the foreground, complemented by flat brush strokes taking up the large, empty space of the middle and background, so as to display the notion of an endless horizon. By adding watercolor, he brought new possibility to colored ink painting, which represented Shiy’s remarkable achievement in his search for balance and new artistic concepts between Chinese and Western aesthetics.