· Art is not something learned; it is what remains. Remove everything that is not truly yours, and what is left is art.
· Experience and borrowing are the ore; insight is the fire. The predecessors are fingers pointing at the moon. But the moon must be seen with one's own eyes.· True art must be unprecedented. It must arise from the authentic feeling of the self, filled with sincerity. It is a birth, not a repetition.
· Do not paint for the title of “artist.” That is only a shadow. Simply walk toward the light.
· Emotions have no hierarchy, only truth or falseness. The deeper you cut into yourself, the more people you illuminate.
· Technique only needs to be sufficient. It is like using chopsticks to eat: as long as they can pick up the food, that is enough.
· A person of clear spiritual perception can see compassion even in a cabbage.
· Form is the skeleton; spirit is the breath. If form outweighs spirit, there is only an empty shell. If spirit outweighs form, it becomes exaggeration—noisy and hollow. A skeleton without breath is a specimen; breath without a skeleton is a soul adrift.
· What is metaphysical easily falls into empty rhetoric; what is material often remains trapped in the shell of appearances.· True art leaves invisible breath within visible brushstrokes.
· So-called style is not designed. It evolves naturally and is lived into being.
· Do not always think about “innovation.” When one is honest enough, it becomes difficult not to be original.
· There is one test of whether a painting is good: ten years later, when you look at it again, you can still remember the state of mind from the day it was painted—fresh, living, and vivid.
· The highest state of art is not to make people exclaim, “How well it is painted,” but to make them fall silent and think.
· In the end, painting is a way of breathing. Some breathe with the lungs; others breathe with the heart.
“Chen Jiuteng’s Los Angeles Senxiangism exhibition hall is located at Unique Home Art Gallery in Los Angeles.”
Address: 653 S Melrose St., Placentia, CA 92870
