To strengthen its students’ creativity and cross-disciplinary ability, the College of Arts at the National University of Tainan runs a “Master Class” series on the transmission and renewal of art; the term’s closing session, on 13 December, invited the artist Lo Chan Peng to speak under the title “On Painting in Oil.”

With a realist style all his own, Lo has won recognition at home and abroad, and is among the contemporary Taiwanese artists most watched by the world. Using the glazing technique of classical painting, he lays down semi-transparent pigment layer upon layer, so the picture takes on a fine, luminous gradation of colour, and into his works he sets an original design of his own, giving form to the spirit of his age in Taiwanese culture.

In the talk, Lo shared the thinking behind his work. He holds that all his life he has been painting one and the same work, and believes deeply that an artist can seal his soul into the canvas, so that each work becomes a collision of souls between artist and viewer. For him, making art is the way he feels his own existence, and the colours on the picture are a hue that belongs to him alone. He urged the students, too, never to give up their concern for society — only by giving form to the inner mind through the brush can the viewer come to a work that has a soul, and only so is a true work achieved.