Since the invitees for the opening ceremony for the "Lao Jia Art Gallery" in 1997 were all acquaintances and friends, I thought it would be dull to show people the same old paintings, so I decided to exhibit all the landscape paintings I have done since 1994. I wanted not only to give my friends a "fresh" view on my work, but also to hear what everyone thought.

Professional painters expressed approval and support. Some said my paintings were cool, awesome. Some friends from outside the art crowd said that I represented the "old society", a patch of darkness. A Korean friend joked and said that you gave all your work's light to Korea, with only darkness left over here. Obviously, they didn't like these works.

Clear and concise, bright colors, joyous—this was the major direction for my works from the period from 1988 to 1994. But after a period of painting works like this, the idea to paint something new came up.

Over the past twenty years of traveling across China, I had accumulated a large amount of landscape material. I had accumulated over two hundred sketches of the Yangtze river and the Three Gorges, and had an equally large amount of material collected in Qinghai, Gansu, Xinjiang, the Greater Khingan Range, the grasslands, and the ocean. At the time I was known for being a figure painter, but whenever I painted from life, I would do landscapes.

My idea to do landscapes was a regular desire to shake up the status quo, but when I laid down the paper, I found it was difficult to make the first stroke—how should I paint? Should I take the traditional route? Should I imitate the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties? Or should I take the dependable route and paint from life? Every path could yield good work, but I never felt like any could reflect my understanding of nature.

What to paint—of course it would be whatever I was interested in. However, people often do not understand themselves, and often confusedly follow what "everyone else" is doing, following the latest trends. Because of this, knowing oneself, understanding oneself is quite difficult.

The best way to understand yourself is to open up your old "screen". In order to walk forward, you have to first look backwards, understand your vision and feelings, look and see what landscape has cemented in your mind, what has once inspired you.

I was born in a mountain area, and enjoy nature's plunging ravines, craggy cliffs, mountain grass, and wild flowers; I rarely go to parks, and don't like to paint buildings. When I reflect upon what I have the most memories of, it is not mountains and trees, but rather the open sky and wide plains.

When I was little I liked to look at the sky, as child's play often includes "research" about the moon and stars; when I looked at the sky as a boy, it had to do with my "profession" at the time, which was collecting firewood, raising pigs, setting out the sheep to pasture, or working in the fields. Every day when I left the house I would be sure to look at the sky, taking a total look at my surroundings and making a "strategy": if there was smoke in the east, then I wouldn't go too far, at night the black clouds would become red clouds, and tomorrow the sky would be clear...During the drought of the summer of 1948, I put on a leather cover and a grass hat, and picked weeds in the blistering sun. I looked up at the sky and saw there was nothing at all, just a blue that would scare you out of your wits.

In 1956 I took a train that went across a railroad bridge on Taiyang Island in Harbin. I suddenly saw several red meteors with a little boat and little rower undulating on the meteor. It took me a while to realize that what I saw was the result of the sun reflecting on the water's surface.

Something even more interesting happened in 1986 and 1993 when I went to Singapore. The first time was at twilight, and the second time was at five in the morning; the first time was a miraculous mirage, with horizontal clouds, vertical clouds, red clouds and white buildings vanishing and disappearing in the sky; the second time was ink black clouds, dark and light ink that seemed just like a xieyi painting hanging in the sky. It was truly miraculous.

Due to the selection of memory, there are not many things that can stay in your mind.

Just like people, if you like eating millet, then rice has no attraction for you.

The expressions in the sky are in fact changes in the earth's energy.

In a preface for one of my exhibitions, I wrote that "I see the universe as a bundle of qi." This is a metaphor, and is also a perspective, a point of departure, a feeling, a mood, illuminating a certain basic quality. 

Painting is visual art, and is "seeing the surface". However, the surface of nature is surrounding by qi, and qi creates all of the changes in the natural world.

In June of 1983, I went to Heng Mountain. After arriving, we were caught in a small rain shower. The fleeting clouds made Heng Mountain into a unreproducible spectacle that was too much even for the eyes to take in. The third day, the sky was clear without even the slightest cloud, and you could see the rocky base of the mountain, taking everything in within your sight. If Heng Mountain was always the same, I'm sure it would be just another anonymous ravine.

The mountains are qi, and qi are mountains. It is constantly in movement, rising and changing, a true living organism. The idea for the Sky and Earth Are One series came from such a thought. I started the series in 1994 with the works for the "Experiment in Tension" exhibition.

As the landscape is replete with qi, it was not enough to use the traditional techniques of chapping, brushing, dotting, and coloring, so I used a combination of flat and round brushes. The flat brush tended to be whole and empty, but lacked energy, whereas the round brush was full of vigor but lacked wholeness. Thus, through a combination of the two I was able to attain the effect I had desired.

Everybody has their own opinion as to whether such an idea was valid, or whether such a technique was valid. However, I believe that the important thing is to see if you can get something out of the work.

Personally, endless revolution will lead to nowhere! If I was to go digital, I wouldn't remember what each key is for, and don't have the courage to put anything in the "trashcan." Using a flat brush on xuan paper should make you more courageous, even though I regardless support endless "revolution".

Fresh, beautiful, all types of inspiration—this is what guides me.

Fresh, beautiful—that is what people instinctively desire. Tiring of the old and desiring the new is human nature; every activity in life is in the goal of attaining something new; the peasants sweat and toil their entire lives to be able to build a new house, and what a joy it is when they are able to move in. Beautiful is an appreciation and pursuit of beauty; when infants open their eyes, they pursue color; great beauties can make heroes loose their lives. All inspiration is required by high standards, and inspiration is "useful" and "efficient". Good artworks are "useful" for mankind, and cannot be contained within a simple glance! (Some works can be defined within vision or feeling, like paintings of human activity that have such a use).

Fresh—what painter doesn't want to paint something fresh? Freshness is a sort of discovery, and whether it can be discovered or not depends upon one's level. If you can't tell the difference between a rock and jade, then how can you discover jade? It's easy to say the word "fresh", but in fact, there is much to learn from it.

I once heard a theorist say that "beauty is vulgar". I feel that he in fact has vulgarized "beauty." What work from all of human history and civilization is not beautiful? "Beautiful" can be divided into elegant and vulgar, however it is not necessary to exclude and denounce the the type of vulgar beauty that everybody appreciates. Something so popularized is in fact what the masses can truly can the most out of. People in the art profession often underestimate the appreciative capacity of the masses. In the 70s I once did a little survey where I placed New Year's painting alongside copies I did of Bada Shanren painting and Huang Shangu's grass cursive, asking several old farmers to take a look and tell me which one was better. They all unanimously said that the purely ink landscape paintings were the best, and that the cursive calligraphy was prettiest (although they didn't understand the characters), truly surpassing my expectation. I thought that they would all prefer the red and green New Year's paintings.

Thus, "beautiful" is not that terribly vulgar thing that experts talk about. Beautiful is an instinctive human pursuit and desire for beauty, and is understood and perceived through man's instincts.

Anything beautiful, anything that conforms to the patterns of beauty will inevitably be discovered and sought out.

Any inspiration—good artworks, breakthrough artworks often have a good effect both within (within the art world) and without (in society), creating an influence on the present and the future. This is a wildly held principle that doesn't require explanation.

Good artists are able to accomplish one of these standards; very good artists are able to achieve two; if you can achieve all three, then you can be called a true master without any shame.