"Sensitivity to and love of radiant, exuberant colors are ingrained in my genes, as well as in my childhood memories," said the painter. "Actually, behind all those colors is a strong nostalgia for my childhood days in mainland China." Although he has lived in Taiwan for over fifty years, Wu still speaks with the pronounced accent of his birthplace, Nanjing. Obviously, his early life not only left indelible marks on his paintings, but also on him as a person.

He left his home and came to Taiwan at the age of sixteen in order to escape the fighting between the Nationalist army and the Chinese Communist forces. Carrying little baggage and only eighty cents in his pocket, the teenage boy, in company with his relatives, did not feel much sadness or anxiety because his father had told him he could return home as soon as the war was over.

Things, however, did not go on as his father had predicted. One year later, mainland China fell into the hands of the Communists, forcing the Nationalist government to retreat to Taiwan. Communications between China and Taiwan were cut, shattering Wu's dream of returning to his homeland. Life became more and more difficult, and his relatives with their limited means were unable to support him anymore. Therefore, he had no choice but to lie about his age, enlist in the army and work as a military scribe. "In my mind, I knew that the comfortable life I had back in my hometown had become a memory."

His life took a crucial turn in the army. One day he saw Hsia Yang, the man who shared a bunk bed with him, drawing on a makeshift sketchbook. Wu told him that he liked to paint too, and that he had even won prizes for painting when he was a student in mainland China. His maternal grandfather was an artist, and he used to watch him create traditional Chinese paintings. "My grandfather might be the reason why I took a liking to painting," said Wu. "As a matter of fact, when I first came to Taiwan, I secretly embraced a hope that maybe I could study painting here. My father, a merchant, had disagreed with my taking up the brush. He used to say that you couldn't make a living by painting."

Sharing the same love for painting, Wu and Hsia often went out together on sketching expeditions. Between them, the two aspiring painters developed a friendship that would last a lifetime. Together they attended painting classes and learned to create sketches and oil paintings. At that time, their monthly salary was NT$25 [US$0.63], but the tuition cost them NT$45 each. Wu told his financial difficulties to the teacher in charge, who then agreed to let him clean the classroom in exchange for the tuition. Hsia talked about Wu's love for painting in that early period of their artistic career: "Before studying painting, Wu paid a lot of attention to his appearance. He'd pomade his hair, wear fashionable leather jackets, and exercise to make himself appear more muscular. But after we started to attend painting classes, all his attention was centered on painting. There was no time to think about other things. He even sold his leather jacket to buy paint."

Among the painting teachers who taught them, renowned painter Li Chung-sheng was the one who influenced them the most profoundly. "Li was different from other teachers," said Wu. "The other teachers taught us painting techniques, but Li talked a lot about art theory and the many aesthetic movements in the West. From his mouth we learned about Cezanne, Cubism and Fauvism, among other things. He definitely opened up new artistic horizons for us."

Li also emphasized the importance of individual styles in artistic creation. He never corrected the paintings of the students in his class, because he believed they should have their own approach to artistic creation, as suited to their personalities. When Wu first studied under Li, his paintings were rather similar in style to Hsia's. Li told him, "If you go on painting this way, however excellent your creations are, you will be no better than Hsia Yang. You should be faithful to yourself, find your own way and paint your own paintings."

At the teacher's insistence, all the students in the class sought hard for their own styles. At first, they would joke to each other, "You could make your lines thicker and stronger and I'll make mine thinner--then our styles will be different!" But as the days went by, the techniques of these young men gradually matured, and they sought seriously for ways to distinguish themselves from each other. Many of them, such as Hsia Yang, Hsiao Chin, Hsiao Ming-hsien and Huo Kang, have become famous painters and carved out niches for themselves either in the local or international art community.

After teaching the students for two years, Li left without even saying goodbye to them, and he went to live and teach in Taichung, central Taiwan. Wu and some of his classmates continued to create on their own, using an above-ground air-raid shelter as their studio. "For seven years, we worked hard to find a new way of artistic expression. That was an important period for us, because we tried out every possible way and experimented as much as we could." Materials were in short supply, but flour sacks substituted for canvas, and red and black ink were mixed with glue to produce an oil-paint texture. Wu even used Chinese paintbrushes instead of charcoal (not easily available at that time) to create Western sketches, which later became an important characteristic of his oil paintings.

In 1956, Hsiao Chin, a friend who had gone to Spain to study painting, told Wu and Hsia in a letter that it was a popular trend abroad for artists to form painting associations to propagate their common ideals. In Taiwan at that time, those who wanted to get a footing in the local art community had to submit their works to the government-sponsored Taiwan Provincial Fine Arts Exhibition for display. If their works were rejected, there was not much chance for the talent of the artists to be noticed. Therefore, Wu, Hsia and six other friends decided to organize a painting association called the Oriental Painting Group and hold exhibitions to showcase their own creations. The Oriental Painting Group became the first abstract painting organization on the island. The eight artists who established it, dubbed by the locals as the "Eight Great Outlaws" because of their courage to work in an abstract style considered bizarre at that time, were important figures who helped launch the island's modern art movement in the 1950s.

Even though the materials these painters used--oil, charcoal, and canvas--were all Western, they vowed to instill an Oriental spirit into their paintings. "Each of us sought inspiration from different sources. Some of us found their muse in calligraphy, some in Chinese opera, some in ancient inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells. As for me, my childhood memories served as a never-failing fount," said Wu. The colors and patterns on his mother's embroideries, the colorful, festive New Year pictures that were used to decorate houses at Chinese New Year, and Chinese woodblock prints--Wu absorbed these nutrients from traditional Chinese folk art. "I like the simple, unadorned spirit and the bright, gay colors of folk art." He turned his colorful childhood memories into art, and at the same time his feelings of nostalgia were relieved through the cathartic creativity of his paintings.

During this period, when they worked in the air-raid shelter, another important thing happened to Wu--the young painter fell in love. His good friend Hsia recollects an interesting episode. "Because there was no water supply in the air-raid shelter, we had to take turns to fetch water from a nearby village. One day, Wu told us, 'From today on, I will get water for you.' We wondered why he suddenly became so kind-hearted. Then we found out that he had fallen in love with the girl from whose house we often borrowed water."

Wu married in 1957. His wages as a professional soldier were minimal, but the burden of supporting a family was large, especially after his four children were brought into the world. Furthermore, oil painting materials were expensive, which constituted another financial problem for Wu. Although the Oriental Painting Group had held many exhibitions and made its name, it was still hard for him to make money by selling paintings. "I didn't sell a painting until I was forty years old, partly because before that time people on the island were too poor to buy works of art."

In order to supplement his income, he turned to another form of creation: woodblock prints. At that time, newspapers often printed woodblock engravings to liven up the pages. The pay was quite good, and so Wu was able to make some money by contributing small woodcut prints to newspapers. The Chinese Modern Print Association, established in 1961, noticed Wu's works and invited him to join the association and display his works in its exhibitions. Because of this, he began to think more seriously about creating woodblock prints for artistic purposes. Soon, he produced two large-scale woodcuts, A Flock of Chickens and Kites, both of which were purchased by foreigners. "It came as a great encouragement to me. For the first time in my life, I was able to gain a balance between ideal and reality. It was so wonderful to know that people appreciated my works and even collected them." He deems it as an important turning point in his artistic career.

Wu continued to produce woodblock prints for a decade, during which time his works were displayed at many important international print exhibitions. The success of his solo exhibitions in Taiwan further established his importance in the field of printmaking. He held more than ten solo exhibitions to display his woodcut prints produced during the ten years, and he was one of the few best-selling woodcutters of the time. The Oriental folk flavor inherent in Wu's prints attracted buyers, especially U.S. military personnel then stationed on the island. "Woodblock prints were a more bourgeois kind of creation," explained Wu. "They were not as expensive as oil paintings, and people were better able to afford them."

Many people thought that he had achieved more in printmaking than in oil paintings. However, wood engraving is a time-consuming and laborious art, and a printmaker is faced with more limitations than an oil painter. After he had created woodcuts for some years, Hsia suggested that he return to oil painting. "Most of the important painters in the world are still those who create in oils," said Hsia. Ten years later, at the age of forty-three, Wu decided to make a comeback to the world of oil painting.

For three years, he adjusted to the shift in the method of creation and worked hard to produce oil paintings. In 1979 he held his first solo painting exhibition in Taipei, which was highly applauded and won him a great deal of recognition. Critics believed that his creation of woodcuts had made an important impact on his creation of oil paintings. Before he took to wood engraving, "his handling of lines and colors was superb and attractive, but the forms in his paintings lacked a certain force and strength," said painter Hsi Te-chin. But the creation of printmaking, with its standard process of preparing designs, carving and printing, had brought about a greater consideration for shapes and forms and lent a more definite, potent force to his oil paintings.

Wu's work, including both his oil paintings and woodblock prints, can be roughly divided into three categories: those that depict his childhood memories, such as Kites, Decorative Tigers, and Children's Toys; those that portray the scenes he sees in his daily life, like Back Street and Old Houses; and still lifes, like flowers.

"Wu is one of the few artists whose work has survived both the 'modern art' and 'nativist' movements in Taiwan... Even in today's postmodern age, there is still little chance that his art will be neglected by the times," art critic Hsiao Chiung-jui remarked. Wu's charm comes mainly from his dexterous combination of Chinese and Western artistic elements in his work. He adds the Chinese folk art tradition (bright colors, simplified, distorted forms and flat images) to his understanding of modern Western paintings and creates an individual idiom that can be easily recognized as his.

The charm emitted by his work appeals to both refined and popular tastes and has attracted a group of faithful collectors. "My greatest pride is that my works are liked by both the general public and professional painters and critics," said the artist with a contented smile.

The lonely teenage boy who enlisted in the army more than fifty years ago has become a mellow old man with wrinkles and streaks of gray hair. But his passion for painting remains the same. His children have all grown up and he can dedicate his whole attention to creating art. For years he has been in the habit of painting every day. He gets up early every morning and then either begins to think or picks up the brush to paint. He insists that there is no shortcut to artistic creation. Everything builds on incessant efforts. "Talent and hard work are two essential constituents of a successful artistic career. As long as I keep painting, inspiration never fails me."

Looking back, he describes his artistic journey as a bumpy but satisfying one. Although artistic creation is full of as much pain as joy, he is incurably addicted to it. "Actually, it is more than just an addiction--painting has become indispensable to my life, like those daily three meals that one cannot do without in order to live." It is obvious that he will not cease to enchant art lovers with his ebullient colors.