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)

Shiy De-jinn said, “Any artist who walks ahead is lonesome.” He expressed his emotion in a bitter way, injecting his profuse and unspeakable love into his paintings of his later years. Under the influence of French writer Andre Gide, Shiy also believed that “preserving art is accompanied by loneliness”; a beautiful footnote of his short life.

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 cow and grass in the foreground, then dark green trees, 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.