Article by Dr. Michael S. Duke, Ph.D.
Professor of Chinese, University of British Columbia

“Build your hut amid human habitations, but don’t be bothered by the noise of cart and horse.” Shyh-charng Lo’s old-style Vancouver home is nothing like Tao Qian’s thatched hut, but it is situated on a busy thoroughfare leading from the City Centre to the University of British Columbia. Inside, the first floor living room doubles as Shyh-charng’s painting studio. His paintings in various stages of completion spill over into the adjacent dining area, are propped up against the simple, almost rustic, furniture, or packed into each available nook and cranny. And of course the walls are all adorned with his own works.

Earth-Sky-Water: the most basic elements that Shyh-Charng brings to life in his paintings

Every day, like a traditional Chinese scholar recluse, retired in his case from Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, Shyh-charng sits there on an old wooden chair facing a blank or partly covered canvas imbued with a deep desire to create something new, to express his emotional responses to the surrounding scenes of everyday life. His mind and heart are not detached, in Tao Qian’s sense, from the scene outside his window, but rather dwelling in the natural scene that he loves so much: the gnarled old dead tree in the middle of his front yard, the bamboos in the left corner, the pine trees near and far, the yellow walls, brown roofs and red brick chimneys of houses further down the hill, the many colored waters of Spanish Banks and English Bay, and, looming up on the other side of the water, the North Vancouver hills and the distant mountains thrusting into the sky. Earth-Sky-Water: the most basic elements that Shyh-charng brings to life in his paintings.

Shyh-charng’s style has often been compared to Chinese scholar or literati painting from Su Dong-pa to Dong Qi-chang. Shyh-charng is certainly not like these traditional icons of Chinese art history to the extent that they posed as gifted amateurs and attempted to avoid any suggestion of mere professionalism. Although largely self-taught, Shyh-charng is a professional through and through. Shyh-charng’s work is very much like his illustrious forebears, however, in that he conceives of his paintings as “an expression of genuine inner feeling” in response to nature or everyday life or, in his words again, as “an artistically transformed diary.”

Genuine emotion, suggestiveness, and a not altogether obvious sense of life

Genuine emotion, suggestiveness, and a not altogether obvious but nevertheless powerful sense of life are the hallmarks of Shyh-charng’s works. Although his paintings depict real places and things, they are artistically transformed to carry the imprint of Shyh-charng’s individual talent and true feelings. To borrow the words of the famous art historian Michael Sullivan apropos Chinese scholar painting, Shyh-charng’s landscapes are “enjoyable as landscapes” and “draw us into nature and make us one with it” even as they paradoxically avoid accurate representation and depict feelings about nature that are at once intensely personal and extremely universal.

rich green trees in the foreground, lighter life-green hills behind the trees, pale blue water in the middle distance, half-dark blue mountains directly opposite, with a band of Shyh-charng-blue

My wife and I are fortunated enough to have two of Shyh charng’s early landscapes on our walls. Both of them are quintessential Shyh-charng style combinations of scene and emotion: rich green trees in the foreground, lighter life-green hills behind the trees, pale blue water in the middle distance, half-dark blue mountains directly opposite, with a band of Shyh-charng-blue (how else can one describe it?) sky on the top of the canvas at the farthest distance from the viewer. To gaze upon these scenes is to be immediately drawn into a realm of calm tranquillity evoked by the marvelously transmemetic expression of Shyh-charng’s unique feelings for the particular natural scene outside his window. Every time we enter into these paintings we feel a deep sense of connectedness and wholeness that helps us, too, to avoid being “bothered by the noise of cart and horse” on the busy street outside. At the same time, paradoxically, we are also exhilarated by the powerful life force emanating from just under the surface placidity of every detail of the scene. Like Tao Qian of old, I “would like to explain this more fully, but I’ve forgotten the words” It is much more fitting that I simply invite you to experience for yourselves the power of this new collection of Shyh-charng’s paintings.

Dr. Michael S. Duke, Ph.D.
Professor of Chinese, University of British Columbia