The huge mass of trees seems to roll towards the viewer like an oncoming green wave. Some of the trees are stood proudly erect, while others are bending gracefully in the wind; each of them breathes and grows in its own way, coming together with the others to create a rich and harmonious symphonic poem. The rhythmic “undulation” of the trees seems to press the sky out to the edge of the canvas, and yet despite the fact that only a narrow line of the azure sky can be seen, it is still portrayed with great detail and with entrancing variation, in which the air can be sensed whirling through space, stretching out in the distance towards infinity. In “Yang-min Mountains,” which Tzu-chi Yeh painted in 2007-2008, the artist instills his depiction of nature with a pronounced sense of hidden meaning and depth; Yeh brings out the beauty of the hills and forests, giving the unique subtropical landscape of the island of Taiwan – with its immense vitality – the spiritual significance of a commemorative monument.

What Tzu-chi Yeh has created with his painstaking depiction of hills, sea, clouds, trees and leaves is more than just a landscape; it is a spiritual portrait rich in emotional power and hidden metaphors. Yeh’s work is often characterized by a quiet nostalgia, and this nostalgia could be said to derive from an eternal attachment to and longing for the natural world. Yeh has retained the layered colors, contrast and spatial atmosphere of classical painting styles, while adopting a simple, streamlined composition based on a modern sense of perspective; the combination of tempera and oils allows Yeh to realize detailed, exquisitely executed layering of colors on the canvas, creating a textured, lifelike image. In “Yang-min Mountains,” what appear at first glance to be silent, unmoving hills and forests reveal themselves on closer inspection to be whispering philosophical messages about the cycle of life; it is as though the artist is engaged in an in-depth, far-reaching dialog with nature, hinting at the cycle of birth and destruction in the cosmos, and evoking deep reflection on the permanence at the heart of space and time.