Yu Cheng-yao used his readings of Tang Dynasty poems to absorb the artistic spirit of Tang painters; however, Yu’s work does not rely on slavish imitation of the ancient masters, and it incorporates critique of the modern world. In his early landscape paintings, Yu would sometimes add little boats and human figures in areas where a river is flowing more slowly over level ground, so as to draw the viewer’s attention to particular features within the canvas. However, once Yu felt that he had fully mastered the multi-layered structure of traditional Chinese landscape paintings, or to put it another way, once his landscape paintings had achieved a sufficient sense of spaciousness and depth to eliminate the need to rely on “signposts” within the painting, Yu began to do away with these unrealistic, “classical” elements, replacing them with Minnan-style farmhouses with red-tiled roofs, terraced fields, and even the rows of white cement houses that are a common sight in the suburbs of Taipei. This change in the ornamentation of Yu’s work gave his landscapes a pronounced sense of realism, while at the same time reflecting the shift in Yu’s attitude away from wholesale criticism of the ancients towards, first, a limited degree of (possibly subconscious) imitation of ancient masters, and then later, a total elimination of any need to rely on the old masters and a transformation towards direct, unmediated dialogue with nature.

Starting from this painting, Yu Cheng-yao began to shoulder the burden of risk that any truly innovative artist must carry. He moved beyond the thousandyear history of traditional Chinese painting to position himself in a place that is somehow “before” the invention and maturation of traditional ink brush painting styles, forcing himself to become an ink brush painting “inventor” and an original interpreter. The true value of Yu Cheng-yao’s work lies not so much in the idea that he has further refined the painting style of a particular artist to a particular school, or that he has added one or more new styles to the existing repertoire of traditional Chinese painting forms, but rather that Yu has brought to the sometimes staid and hidebound world of traditional ink brush painting a new sense of creative possibility; Yu’s work demonstrates that the original creative stream of ink brush painting continues to flow. Excerpt from “Lin Chuan-chu, Contemporary Taiwanese Ink Brush Painting: Yu Cheng-yao – A Great Talent Standing Outside of Contemporary Trends”, Artist Publishing, Taipei, 2005