Early in the morning of January 9, 1999, we set out for the mountains in Tamsui, a suburb of Taipei, to visit the senior Taiwanese painter, Liao Teh-cheng. He is celebrated for his still lifes and landscapes, all of which depict scenes from his daily life.

Leaving Taipei behind, we drove up steep, winding mountain roads to the painter's home, perched midway up the mountains. Fresh, chilly mountain air greeted us as we stepped out of the car. Liao was gardening in his large front yard. The eighty-year-old wore only a thin shirt and a pair of long pants, while we were wrapped up in warm, thick coats.

Liao welcomed us warmly and gave us a little tour around his terraced garden, where we could see poinsettia, sweet-scented osmanthus, cockscomb and numerous other plants, some growing from the earth and some creeping out of crevices in the stone walls. The osmanthus scented the air, and we luxuriated in its refreshing aroma. Liao introduced each of the plants to us as if they were his old friends. He looked so animated and so at one with his surroundings. I had the feeling that not only did he nurture the place, but the place nurtured him too.

After the tour, we climbed a flight of stone steps to his house, which overlooks the famous Kuan Yin Mountain, a recurrent subject in his paintings. We stood for some time on the veranda and enjoyed the lovely mountain scenery before going into the house. "The mountain never fails to enchant me," the painter remarked. "She puts on different faces not only through the four seasons, but even during the course of a day. That's why I never get tired of painting her."

"My teacher is in love with Kuan Yin Mountain," said Chen Ching-hsi, another artist who had come along with us to visit Liao. "He paints her with all his heart."

Once in the house, we were served hot tea and dainty cookies by Liao's wife, an accomplished pianist. "Painter and musician," I thought. "What a perfect union!" Cozy in our little corner of the living room, I began to ask Liao questions about his art and life. A door into his world was opened and we were invited to walk through it.

A look into the past

Liao was born into a rich, prominent family in Taichung City, central Taiwan, in 1920, when the country was still under Japanese occupation. His grandfather was a high-ranking government official. Although he worked for the Japanese, he never failed to show concern for his own people. At that time, the Taiwanese were excluded from the better schools by the Japanese. In order to fight against this discrimination, Liao's grandfather, with the help of his friends, built a middle school to enable his fellow countrymen to receive a better education. Under such paternal influence, Liao's father, Chin-ping, also devoted his life to serving his people and country. He was active in social movements early in life and often delivered speeches to publicize democratic ideas.

As a member of the Taiwanese intelligentsia, Liao Chin-ping paid special attention to his children's education. He bought books for them and helped cultivate their tastes for literature and classical music. Music became the future painter's lifelong friend, and he formed a habit of listening to music while painting. "Music helps me to create. I have always wanted to translate the harmony of musical rhythms into pictorial form."

Liao did not display any special talent for painting in his early days, although he did take a strong interest in it. It was not until he was in high school and won a prize for a landscape in a major art exhibition that he discovered that he could paint. But at that time he was still too young to know what he really wanted to do. Therefore, after he graduated with honors from high school, he followed his father's wishes and went to Japan, planning to pursue medical studies there and become a doctor.

Once in Japan, he started to prepare for the entrance exam for a medical school in Tokyo, though without much enthusiasm. One day while taking a stroll in a park, he saw a group of students painting under the direction of their teacher--the famous Japanese cartoonist, Takana Hisayoshi. Liao's passion for painting was rekindled. Unable to suppress his deep longing for it, he decided on the spot to give up the idea of studying medicine. He approached Takana and asked him how to enter art school. The teacher told him he could take the exam for the Tokyo Fine Arts Institute.

Liao spent half a year preparing for the exam. He studied books on art and entered the Kawabata Art School to take lessons in drawing. Having had no formal training in art before he came to Japan, he did not embrace high hopes for being admitted to the school. Much to his surprise, he passed the highly competitive entrance exam. When he asked the teacher who had reviewed his work why he was accepted, the teacher told him that although his drawing skills were not very mature, his work derived a special force from his meticulous observations. The teacher believed that he had the potential to make a good painter.

When Liao's father learned that he had passed the entrance exam for the Tokyo Fine Arts Institute, he sent a telegram telling him not to give up trying for medical school. However, Liao was now set on being a painter, so he disobeyed his father and enrolled in the Tokyo Fine Arts Institute, which had nurtured quite a few major Taiwanese painters, such as Chen Cheng-po, Li Shih-chiao and Li Mei-shu.

At the Tokyo Fine Arts Institute, Liao studied sketching and oil painting under the tutelage of the painters Minami Kunzoo and Yasui Sotaro. In addition to artistic techniques, the most important thing he learned from them was how to observe and think before starting to paint. They taught him that what is essential in painting is not rendering a likeness, but capturing the essence of things. A painting reflects what a painter has in his heart and mind: if he is empty and shallow, his painting will lack a certain depth and he will not be able to bring out the life and spirit of an object. Liao was fortunate to have had an early grounding in literature and classical music, which made him refined and knowledgeable and helped to lend a learned, profound quality to his painting.

In Japan, Liao also had the great opportunity to study original paintings done by modern western painters like Matisse and Picasso, whose art was quite in vogue at that time. He was impressed and touched by the works of Pissaro, van Gogh, Gauguin and C…zanne. Liao was especially influenced by the way the colors harmonized and achieved richness in C…zanne's paintings, which have an abiding, eternal quality that every artist aspires to achieve. Once in a gallery, he was completely enthralled by the world presented in a painting done by C…zanne, and his eyes were riveted on it for two whole hours.

During his stay in Japan, Liao had to face many lonely days. Defying his father's wishes and insisting on going his own way meant that he had to take all the consequences himself. It was a tough choice, and what ensued was a lot of stress and pressure. Whenever he felt lonely, homesick or uncertain about his future, he would turn to the music of Mozart, Beethoven or Schubert, in which he found courage, support and inspiration.

Liao spent eight years in Tokyo, his studies in the Institute being suspended for one year due to World War II. At the end of the war, Taiwan was given back to China, and Liao returned to Taiwan in 1946. After accepting a position in the Taipei Teachers College, he began a teaching career which was to last forty years. In the same year, his work Flowers won grand prize at the first government-sponsored Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition.

In the second year after Liao returned to his home country, a dark shadow descended on his family--his father mysteriously disappeared. His disappearance was presumed to be connected with the February 28 Incident of the same year, in which a great number of the Taiwanese elite who cried out for political reform and justice were executed by the Chinese Nationalist government. Liao later heard that his father had been captured and executed by the military police near Kuan Yin Mountain and that his body had been thrown into the sea, but this rumor was never confirmed. His family clung to a slim ray of hope and kept waiting for his return, but this unfortunately never happened.

His father's disappearance shrouded Liao in clouds of deep sorrow and pain, which even time could not heal. His heavy mood was reflected in the works he created during the period from 1950 to 1970. Mostly still lifes, these works were marked by the use of dark, heavy tones. Fruits and vegetables set in dim indoor scenes emitted a feeling of gloom and looked like souls weeping in the dark night. Liao was at the lowest ebb of his life.

In 1950, Liao married Cheng Hung-hsia, who later bore him three sons, all of whom have made great achievements in life. The youngest son, like his mother, is a pianist. In 1951 and 1954, Liao's Early Autumn and Sunset garnered prizes at the annual Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition. After that, in order to protest against the strong political atmosphere which permeated the exhibition, he never participated in it again. Instead, he and several other Taiwanese painters founded the Century Fine Arts Society in 1954 and staged their own exhibition. These artists took turns visiting each other's homes to discuss art-related topics, despite the fact that their painting styles and creative methods were all widely different.

Years went by quickly as Liao busied himself with teaching and painting. As a conscientious teacher, he devoted most of his time to his students and only painted in his spare hours. Even though he did not produce many works this way, he still continued to win awards and he was often invited to display his paintings in art exhibitions.

In 1970, he moved from Taipei to his present abode in Tamsui, and his life entered into a lasting period of supreme serenity and peace. Living in the mountains, surrounded by the greatness and beauty of nature, he continues to enjoy what nature brings him. This period since 1970 has represented the peak of his creativity. He has expanded the motifs of his paintings from mostly still lifes to more landscapes, and he has begun a series of paintings centering on Kuan Yin Mountain and its surrounding scenic spots. A Mountain Path (1970), Spring (1973), A Winter Morning (1982), and Overlooking Kuan Yin Mountain (1986) are all works from this period.

A major change was made in his still life paintings of this period. The painter himself commented on this change for us. "After painting still lifes for twenty years, I finally made a small breakthrough. I introduced a window into my still life paintings, thereby bringing in the sunlight, the outdoor view and the air. It took me years to make this small step forward." By bringing the sunlight, the outdoor view, and the air into the formerly closed, gloomy indoor scenes of his still life paintings, Liao made his works look lighter and more lively in atmosphere. This breakthrough of his also carried with it a symbolic meaning: after suffering excruciating pain on account of his father's disappearance, the painter finally opened his mind to the outside world and regained hope and trust in it.

The call of nature

Liao paints nothing but nature. When asked why, he said, "Nature is far too varied for me to ever exhaust the subject." He loves to paint fruit and flowers--often hand-picked from orchards and gardens--the scenery he sees every day, the air he breathes, and the sunlight which shines on the piece of land which nourishes him. His affection for nature can be traced back to his childhood. He grew up in a rural area, and the vegetables and fruit he ate all came from the family farm and orchards. He often wandered in the boundless green fields. As he roamed on the soft grass and smelled the fragrance of the earth, a deep fondness for nature developed.

"Nature is my teacher. She gives me inspiration. Even a small blade of grass can inspire me. I discover in it the very rhythm of life. So when I paint the grass, I not only want to capture its likeness, I also want to paint the power and the vitality which enable it to grow from the earth."

The painter's love for Taiwan

Looking at Liao's landscapes, we notice that they are almost all green--light green, deep green, vivid green, all the different shades of green. The artist says that green is not only the color of nature, but also "the perpetual color of Taiwan." He uses this color to express his love for his home country.

In a way, Liao is carrying on his father's mission for the Taiwanese people. He cares for his motherland through his painting, just as his father did through concrete social action.

Fifty-two years ago when Liao returned to Taiwan from Japan, the first question he asked himself was, "What can I do for the art of my country?" Through his incessant creation, he has contributed much to the beautiful art of Taiwan.

Coda

Liao views his art very seriously, and he is noted for constantly modifying his paintings. On a few occasions, he even retrieved his work from someone to whom a painting had been sold because he wanted to make some changes to it. It is not unusual for him to work on a painting for as long as ten to twenty years. His search for artistic perfection is an endless journey.

As Liao grows older, his aesthetics and painting skills have also matured to a degree that enables him to fully realize his artistic aspirations. However, he told us during the interview that his best work is still waiting to be created. He wants to do a painting that, on the strength of its artistic value, will be passed on and on, from generation to generation.