"To live fully and earnestly is art. Everyone can be an artist. As for me, I am just one who knows how to paint." This is the artistic credo of painter Wu A-sun.

People call him A-sun (his full Chinese name is Wu Hsuan-sun). The first one who called him that would have been his father. This simple, no-frills name reflects the artist's character. Although his paintings have won him a great deal of international recognition, he is still like an unsophisticated country boy. In his sturdy body hides the most primal and vigorous life force.

Wu said he has led a roving life--he is nearly sixty and has spent half of his life travelling. He first left his hometown in Ilan County, northeastern Taiwan, when he was eighteen years old. The young lad arrived in Taipei, the most prosperous city on the island, to embark on his life's journey. Back then, many locals looked upon Taipei as the promised land where their dreams could be realized.

A good teacher changes his life

"It took me five years to finish junior high school. I was held back two years because of poor grades." It is surprising to know that Wu, who once taught at the Department of Fine Arts of National Taiwan Normal University, was not that good in school when he was a teenager. After he graduated from junior high, his poor academic performance made him decide to quit school and go to Taipei to learn some working skills. He was thinking of becoming a car mechanic or a barber.

Just as he was about to leave for Taipei, his father said to him, "A-sun, I hope you can continue your schooling. Our family will provide for you." His father still embraced the hope that his son could become an intellectual. Wu, therefore, studied on his own while learning to repair cars. His efforts paid off--he passed the entrance exam to Tamkang High School. "That school changed my life," he said.

The painter never thought that he had a talent for painting. In his opinion, he was just more "honest." Unlike his high school classmates, who always painted human figures with perfect, flawless skin, he thought real people did not look that way, and so he painted a lot of human figures with yellow skin. One time their art teacher asked them to draw a hand. Wu looked at his own hands, which were scarred and spotted from farm work, and he came up with a picture of a hand mottled with red and black.

"Surprisingly, our teacher praised me for having a good sense of color. Although I didn't capture forms well, he told me not to worry about it because a good sense of form could be cultivated." The teacher asked Wu to stay after school to study painting with him. He also provided free drawing paper and pigments for Wu.

The painter thinks that this teacher's attitude towards painting had a great impact on him. When Wu had finished a picture, his teacher always said, "This painting may not be so good, but there isn't another one like it in the whole world." That made Wu very proud of his own artistic creations. Yes, that was right. Although the painting was not the best in the world, it was the only one like it. That teacher, Chen Ching-hui, taught him to have respect for his work.

When Wu was about to graduate from the school, he told Chen that he wanted to study art in the future. At first he thought the teacher might laugh at him, but instead he said, "I believe that's not just the right course for you to take, but the only one." The teacher's words augured his future. Since then, he has never wavered in his determination to pursue an artistic career.

Whenever Wu looks back on his life, he is always grateful to Chen for changing his life. He even set up the "Chen Ching-hui Scholarship" at Tamkang High School to encourage artistically gifted students to develop their talents.

"Can he paint?"

None of Wu's junior high school classmates believed that he could paint, because Wu used to ask them to do his painting assignments for him. To everyone's surprise, he not only became a student at the Department of Fine Arts of National Taiwan Normal University, he even went to Spain to further his art studies. Years later, his high school invited him to give a speech to the students. When Wu arrived at the school, he saw a banner hung at the entrance which read: "Outstanding Alumnus Wu A-sun! Welcome back to school!" The painter went up to the stage and confessed to the principal and everyone present, "Actually, I'm not outstanding at all. When I was a student here, I was excellent in neither virtue nor learning. I failed to pass to the next grade twice, and I even got a demerit for skipping classes to go swimming." The principal laughed heartily upon hearing that. He said that Wu was exactly the kind of example the school wanted for its students--he showed how a person could correct his or her wrongdoing and turn over a new leaf.

When Wu was young, painting was by no means a popular career, since most people thought artists would end up starving. But Wu's father did not care that much about what his son chose to study. He was more than happy that his son, who had once decided to drop out of school, was interested in studying anything at all. As long as he stayed in school, everything was fine. Thus, Wu became the first college student from the small village where he lived.

He still remembers that one of his junior high school classmates later became a butcher in a food market. One day he went to the market dressed in sloppy clothes. His classmate, who had not seen him in a long time, asked him what he did for a living. "I'm a student at National Taiwan Normal University," he answered. "Stop kidding me. When we were in junior high, you had to repeat a grade twice, whereas I only had to do so once. And I'm selling pork and you're attending a prestigious university? Please, don't brag." The classmate sneered at him and continued to chop his pork. All right. "I'm driving a cab," Wu lied to please his classmate. "That's more like it." The butcher was satisfied.

Afterwards, Wu often won prizes at art competitions, and he soon made a name for himself in art circles. He was lauded as a rising star and his name often appeared in the newspaper. Some of his former classmates said to him, "I read about a painter in the newspaper who has the same name as yours." It never occurred to them that the painter could be him. Though his friends did not believe he could paint, Wu never took it to heart. He just laughed it away and even joked about it to other people.

A Spartan education

Wu remembers that in 1980, after he returned from Africa, the United Daily News was holding a series of art exhibitions at different artists' birthplaces. By that time Wu had become very famous, and he was invited to show his paintings at an exhibition held in his hometown. His father was very proud of him and invited a lot of friends to the exhibition. After having a look at all the paintings, one of them said to his father, "Among all the paintings here, your son's works are the ugliest."

The friend's words deeply depressed Wu's father. The more abstract Wu's paintings became, the more unhappy his father grew. One day the old man could not bear it any more. "You've regressed a lot," he told his son. "Your painting techniques were at their best when you were in high school. At that time, when you painted a banana, it looked like a banana. But now I can't recognize anything you paint."

Wu said that for a while he frequently accepted interviews and appeared on television. "Don't think that I enjoyed being in the spotlight--it was just a way to please my father."

Wu said that his father had brought them up in a rather strict way. When he was small, he had to go to the fields to work before daybreak. He would work until the sun rose, and then after a quick breakfast he would hurry off to school. After class, instead of going home, he headed directly for the fields to work again until it was so dark that he could not see the road ahead of him. There were no weekends, no summer or winter vacations on the farm.

Wu's father often compared himself to a boat builder. His children were the boats he made. After a boat is built, it doesn't sit snugly in a harbor: it has to go out to sea to ride the wind and weather all kinds of storms. Therefore, he always asked his children to rise to every challenge. Wu has educated his children in a similarly spartan way. He asks them to be independent and never pampers them.

"I never drove them to and from school." He said it was their business to get to school on time. If they overslept, they needed to take the consequences. He considered it a good thing that he often had to go abroad. Because he could not spend much time with his children, they had to learn to be on their own and be responsible for themselves. Now his children have all grown up. His son works in finance, and his daughter, influenced by Wu, is studying aboriginal art in Hawaii.

It is commonly known that Wu embraces a passion for aboriginal culture and art. "As a matter of fact, in the past fifty years no artist has been immune from the influence of aboriginal art."

If you ask Wu whether he has any wish, he replies, "My wish is to build a museum." Over the years, he has collected thousands of aboriginal art works from Africa, Oceania, and South America, which are all stored in his warehouses. He will be more than happy if these art works can be displayed in a museum that he built and be appreciated by people who are also fond of aboriginal art.

The painter's attitude toward life

Wu's lawyer friend, Chen Wen-sung, described him as a workaholic who never wastes a second. Although he is generous and kind to other people, he is very strict with himself. He never allows himself to slack off. "Van Gogh started to paint when he was twenty-seventy years old, and he died at thirty-seven. His artistic life lasted only a short ten years. I often thought to myself: if a painter can become a top-notch artist after only ten years' efforts, I must have lived in vain. I am so much older than thirty-seven, and look at how little I have achieved."

In order to remain competitive in the international art community, Wu chose to set up his studio in Paris. He spends half of his time in that metropolis. When he is there, he regularly visits Auvers-sur-Oise, where Van Gogh took his life in 1890. He walks around the place and reflects on what he has done since he turned thirty-seven years old. This is his way of spurring himself to work harder.

"I want to know my limits"

Wu often stands in his studio in Paris and looks out at the Pablo Picasso Museum, only fifty meters away. "A maestro like Picasso created a thousand paintings a year. How many do I produce each year?" Every time he thinks of this, he works even more diligently. On New Year's Day in 2000, he made a vow to complete one thousand paintings in a year. If he could not be as great as Picasso, he could at least produce as many paintings as the maestro.

From January to October that year, he painted nearly nine hundred pictures--three pictures a day on average. In November, when it looked like he was about to fulfill his goal, his arm suddenly became terribly painful--he had hurt it by overworking it. "It was awfully painful. My arm still hasn't completely recovered yet," Wu said. Apparently, an artist's life is not as romantic as most people would presume. Just look at how Wu toils and moils every day to get the most out of himself.

Although he injured himself by working too hard, he does not regret it at all. "I want to know my limits--the limits of my creative powers and the limits of my ability to endure pain." To him, life is a big experiment, the purpose of which is to discover the full extent of one's abilities. "It looks romantic to be an artist, but in fact art involves a lot of hard work."

Wu usually gets up at four in the morning. He works until noon, and then, after a short rest, he meets with art critics or goes to exhibitions. Sometimes he even flies to Germany, Switzerland or Spain to see art displays or pays visits to Africa. His schedule is always packed. His friends say that although he lives in such a dreamy place as Paris, he leads as hard a life as water buffaloes in Taiwan (water buffaloes used to pull the plows for farmers on the island).

"Do you still have time to sit down and leisurely savor a cup of coffee?" his French friends once asked him. The roadside cafes in Paris are always full of people sipping coffee and enjoying the afternoon sunshine. The aroma rejuvenates people's senses. "Actually, I regard work as my enjoyment." Wu said it is impossible to get famous and outstanding by leading a leisurely and easy life. If he had wanted such a life, he would not have needed to move his studio to Paris, a place populated by more than a hundred thousand artists. The city is a competitive art arena. Those who don't work hard enough will soon be winnowed out.

The artist said the happiest people are those who can utilize and develop their potential to the full. A gifted person whose talent is unappreciated by others is bound to suffer. Pressure can bring out the best potential in a person. "The more capable people are, the more pressure they need to endure."

Resolved to seek excellence

Wu seems to be in a constant race--he is always wound up and never gives himself a chance to relax. In order to bring his talent into full play, he keeps testing his limits. "Let me give you an example. If today my goal is to run from Paris to Lyon, I will run really hard. Even if I fall down and die halfway, I'll have no regrets, because I am already on the road."

Take long-distance racing, his favorite sport, for another instance. Wu will tell you that if you want to win a ten-kilometer race, here are some tips: When you feel as if you are completely out of breath and on the verge of quitting, just remember: you will not die if you dash forward. You are not the only one who feels exhausted--the runners in the other lanes feel the same too. If at this crucial moment you break into a sprint, the energy you display will daunt your competitors and cause them to shrink back and give up. Then it will not be hard for you to win first place.

Wu once told reporters that people usually only remember those who win the first prize. In the Olympics, the difference between first and second place is often only a split second, but usually all the attention is focused on the one who crosses the finishing line first. Although the runners-up are also world-class athletes, they are, after all, only runners-up, not champions.

He was even more inspired by automobile races. "First place actually lies between death and second place." A car racer might get killed if he goes faster. But if he becomes afraid of death, he will never win first place. To reach a realm that no one else has attained before, one must face up to this fact.

The artist said that among the ten million painters in the world, only three or four hundred can hold displays in galleries and garner prizes in major art contests. The competition is really intense. It is even more so in Paris, where at least a hundred thousand painters have gathered to parade their talent. If you want to stay on the top of the ladder, you must beat at least 99,600 painters, who are, by the way, all first-rate artists. "You have to fight for your place tooth and nail."

Wu is afraid of being called a "maestro." In his opinion, only those who have passed away are worthy of this respectful appellation. When artists are alive, they have to pass all kinds of tests--art competitions, criticism, etc.--before their status can be ascertained. Even after they die, they cannot rest assured of their achievement because they have to face another test: the test of time. It takes at least twenty years to know whether their

works have stood the test or have died with them.

He thinks that a painter's artistic life begins only after he or she has died. When artists are alive, their friends might want to buy their works to flatter them. If after their death people still want to buy their works, they can be counted as truly successful artists.

Travel and artistic creation

Wu is often asked what his source of inspiration is.

He says he has never run out of inspiration. He gains endless inspiration from the trips he takes around the world. Every trip stimulates his creativity. He records what he sees in his diaries and then uses them to refresh his creative wellsprings.

In the painter's opinion, if you stay in a place too long, your senses inevitably become dull. But when you go somewhere you've never been before, your brain comes alive. You look at everything with a fresh eye and inspiration surges up like a spring. At times like these, he picks up his pen and writes down all of his feelings in his diary.

"12/10/85 Lima

In the eyes of this woman, slimness, which is a fashion in the civilized world, stands for sickness."

Beside this entry is a drawing of a fat woman in Lima.

His diaries are like a collection of written anthropological records. The Quechua people in South America wear wool hats and travel across mountain trails on vicunas. A Dani woman in Irian Jaya, New Guinea, chopped off seven of her fingers because she believed she had caused the death of her family members. When their parents, children or siblings die, Dani people always put the blame on themselves because they feel they have failed to take good care of them. They have to chop off their fingers to express their grief.

There is more. In Malawi, people bury their dead spouses under their beds. They wrap the body with a woven cloth and cover it with a stone slate carved with exquisite shapes of birds. They don't even mind the foul smell that wafts from the corpse, because they know they will soon get used to it.

Wu writes down everything that fascinates him as if they were happening for the first time--at least for him they are all fresh new experiences. They spark his imagination and fuel the brilliance of his creative career. Once as he was driving across New Guinea, he saw a child's doodling on a rock. It was an eye. As simple as the doodling was, it plucked his heartstrings. He immediately opened his notebook and copied the eye in it. This eye later inspired him to create over a hundred paintings, because he was greatly touched by how it had imbued the rock with life.

Eternity in artistic creation

Although his footsteps have covered more than ninety countries, he can never forget the time he boated across the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea. When night fell, he saw numerous pairs of red eyes glowing in the darkness. Those weird eyes belonged to crocodiles! He admitted that he was challenging another limit--thee limit of his ability to withstand his fear. With crocodiles staring threateningly at him, with rain falling down so hard that he could not see what was ahead of him, and with the propeller of his boat tangled in water hyacinths, the world seemed to have come to an end.

"I was so nervous that I didn't have a bowel movement for several days." During the several months when he journeyed back and forth across the river, he was in a constant state of nervousness. He had to carry a gun to boost his courage. Despite such tormenting travelling experiences, the painter still firmly believes that travel is the best way to heighten one's creativity. He is clearly an excellent example: he could surely not have become what he is today if he had not embarked on all his previous adventures.

The trips he took to Africa changed his life. "I was greatly inspired by what I saw there." He was touched by how simple and yet talented the local people were. Their artistic creations could be seen everywhere--even on chairs and doors. "They created because they had something to say, not because they had been invited to an exhibition." Just because their intentions were pure, their works touched people all the more.

Wu said that before he visited Africa, he used to care a lot about what critics said about his works, about whether his paintings were popular or not. But after he visited Africa and saw the creative freedom enjoyed by the people there, he began to liberate himself--"I will paint whatever I like, and it is up to you whether you want to buy my paintings or not." He said that in Taiwan's art market, landscape paintings are the most popular and profitable genre. In order to cater to the local market, he used to produce a lot of landscape paintings. But after his trips to Africa, he shifted his attention to painting human figures, because he had always felt that the human face is the most beautiful thing in the world. No natural scenery, however ravishing, can compare with it. "I enjoy capturing the moving expressions on a face," he said.

When he was a child, he hoped he could act like Robinson Crusoe. After he grew up, he really became a person who travels a lot around the world. Despite all his wanderings, he has found a permanent home in artistic creation. To him, art and life are closely related. "To be able to live fully and earnestly is art. Everyone can be an artist. As for me, I am just one who knows how to paint." This is his artistic credo.