Wu Ting-hsien is a vital and dynamic creative artist. Growing up in a poor village in Taiwan's Yunlin County, Wu initially followed his brothers in taking up carpentry and iron and steel work after junior high school. But Wu's love for art gave him the determination to escape his difficult circumstances, and he first made his way through Fu Hsing Arts High School while working part time, then gained admission to the National Taiwan College of Arts, and finally obtained a master of fine arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in the US. Wu's ability to persevere through this difficult process would not have possible without both his toughness and determination and his deep love of art. In contrast to the emphasis on color in some artists' work, Wu has created a more austere, abstract style whose freshness and originality presents a striking contrast.

Wu builds his lyrical style from the structuring of basic elements on the canvas, his great experience in painting aiding him in projecting their sense of temporal motion. The theme of the present exhibition of Wu Ting-hsien's works is "Lines of the Mountain." Wu begins with the forms of the natural world, which he then simplifies and abstracts into the natural lines and forms that spread freely across his canvases. Wu's work, with forms and shapes that are sometimes agitated and at other times smooth and tranquil or even clashing and dissonant, has a jazzy, modern feel. Wu's wild and extravagant brushwork leads viewers through the agitated emotions of conflict and antagonism and into tranquility, and toward the extending, turning, and shifting sense of time at the heart of his work. Ultimately these canvases return to peace, and from all these elements there gradually emerges a modern style with its own kind of minimalist edge.

The "Lines of the Mountain" series of works projects the thought processes of the artist onto the canvases, organizing complex emotional states into the structuralism of their compositions which allow viewers to engage in calm and simple contemplation of the works and immerse themselves in their atmosphere. Perhaps most interesting and most central to Wu's art is that, while employing the western oil medium and its techniques, along with a highly simplified and structuralist style, Wu nevertheless communicates and the sensibilities and humanist concerns of the East.