Artist Statement｜Yu Sheng Li – All Living Beings

For me, the path of painting lies in discovering new life within ancient traditions. The brush once carried the temperament of the ancients; today, it becomes a means for us to question our own place in the world. Tradition is not a constraint, but a silent mountain range—vast, enduring, and filled with possibilities yet to be exhausted. In studying the techniques of earlier masters and observing the forms of nature, I am not merely copying or depicting the real; rather, I seek the echoes of the present hidden within layers of intersecting brush and ink.

The Song dynasty valued precision and order; the Yuan dynasty prized spontaneity and inner spirit. Though different in approach, both hold deep reflections on life and human culture. The tension between reason and emotion, form and intention, forms the core of my artistic inquiry. Using classical fine-line painting as the structural foundation and contemporary thought as its animating force, I search for balance between discipline and freedom. This is how I understand creation—an attempt to uncover the inner appearance of the self amid the myriad phenomena of the world.
The All Living Beings series continues my exploration of the relationship between humans and animals. Figures with animal heads and human bodies—sitting, feasting, conversing, playing—appear humorous on the surface yet carry layered meaning. These images are inspired by Pu Hsin-yu’s Illustrations of Divine Oddities, in which literati brushwork is used to portray the strange and the divine. By transforming ancient tales of the supernatural into allegorical imagery, Pu allows the “other” to become a mirror for the human world. For me, this spirit marks a threshold where tradition meets the contemporary—speaking today’s language through the ink of antiquity.

The “upside-down world” depicted in these works is, to me, a reflection of our own. When beasts act with human gestures, and deities embody mortal desires, familiar order becomes overturned and reborn. The dog-headed, goose-headed, and cat-headed figures dressed in traditional robes are not mythical beings, but projections of the human heart. They eat, talk, offer, and play as they move through the world unaware of their own strangeness. Incense smoke, scholar’s rocks, and broken tables symbolize the erosion of time and civilization. These subtle details drift within seemingly still compositions—like a rising thread of incense, clear yet tinged with melancholy.

In technique, I continue to employ traditional fine-line painting with layered mineral and botanical pigments. Every turn of a line, every accumulation of color, is both a study of the past and a dialogue with the self. This approach is not only craftsmanship but a contemplation of time—an attempt to rediscover stillness and authenticity in an age of accelerating pace.

What I portray is neither legend nor dream, but a form of “contemporary divinity and strangeness.” Between the absurd and the solemn, I aim to construct a world suspended between reality and imagination, where viewers may find reflections of themselves. All Living Beings refers not only to the figures within the paintings, but to all of us who share these mirrored forms.

And when the scene comes to rest—when the smoke fades—
what remains is a quiet clarity:
time spares no one, the world moves unceasingly,
and only within these myriad beings may we rediscover the heart of who we are.