In the history of Western art, “Lily” has always been a symbol of sacredness, purity, elegance, loyalty, and faithfulness. The famous painting “Annunciation” by Leonardo da Vinci, housed in the Uffizi gallery in Italy, where Archangel Gabriel kneels before the Virgin Mary, proffering a lily. The same imagery also appears in the same theme “Ecce Ancilla Domini! (The Annunciation)” by the British Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Every spring during the Easter period, “Lily” symbolizes the resurrected life of Christ.

In the Chinese “Lily” because of its root grows in a hugging shape, which subtly brings auspicious meanings such as “Hundred Years of Harmonious Love”. Tzu-chi Yeh’s “Hualien’s Wild Lily” has memories of his own youth, more than fifty years ago, when travelling the Qingshui Cliff in Su-Hua Highway, the bumpy ride on the Golden Horse Bus brought the bouncy motion sickness, he was consoled and refreshed by the full bloom of wild lilies across the mountain. Nineteen years after leaving his hometown, he returned to Hualien and visited the Pine Garden at the foot of Meilun Mountain again. Through his personal emotions and experience, Tzuchi Yeh employs the classicism “Central Law” to move around with the image, which intertwined the object and space in order to display the closeness and estrangement, the physical existence yet utterly coldness, the sense of tranquility but somehow loneliness, the mystery and ambiguity as if illusion, and finally which also empowers “Lily” with unique glory and dignity.

-Dr. Kin Tsuei Chang (Ph.D. in Art Education,
New York University)