Louis Yen: Persevering Painter of Light

Yen was born in 1959 to a family of locksmiths in Tao­yuan, and he caught polio at just a year old. The disease has led to the gradual withering of his muscles over the course of his life.

Yen’s seal engravings are works of art, revealing in their tiny spaces boundless creativity and charm. (photo by Lin Min-hsuan)

Top-dollar engraver

Yen was never able to walk normally. Yet he also never gave up on himself, working hard at his studies as if to prove that he could do what able-bodied people did despite his physical challenges.

He earned good grades in school, but to help with the family finances, after graduating from junior high school he chose not to pursue his education any further. Instead, he would drag his weak legs onto an old bicycle, leaving Tao­yuan to set up a lock and key stand in places such as ­Yingge and San­xia. Cutting keys by hand provided a foundation in sculptural techniques.

Yen would ask his customers about their key-using habits, aiming to provide a better-performing key based on their unique wear conditions. His outstanding skills earned him the title “father of 10,000 locks.”

During the day, Yen studied the skills of a locksmith, and at night he practiced cutting seals, diligently learning how to carve Chinese characters in the “cursive,” “semi-cursive,” “official” and “seal” calligraphic styles. He also studied oil painting under the artist Liu Qing­song—an education that would help to elevate his seal carving into the realm of art.

In a seal just a few centimeters square, Yen would choose among a wide range of subjects—from dragons and phoenixes, to cranes, to pines and bamboo. These were matched with seal script. The resulting ink impressions were almost like paintings.

The labor-intensive nature of seal engraving limits production, so anyone wanting to hire Yen after he gained renown would have to wait several months before he had time to get to the job. His rates reached as high as NT$10,000 per character. But even with those lofty fees, there was unflagging demand for his services.

Yen’s seal engraving

A home built by hand with love

The experience of studying painting when he was 19 both broadened the range of subject matter that Yen drew on for his seal engravings and introduced him to his lifelong partner, Susan Yen. With his physical disability, he relied on his wife to take care of his daily needs as he focused his energy on pursuing the art of seal carving. Yet as orders piled up, the demands of his work grew overwhelming. The strain on his weak muscles caused his condition to worsen. Realizing that wealth without health was meaningless, he decided to retire and move to Canada.    

To express his gratitude to his wife, Yen found an empty lot near Vancouver and decided to build a castle­-like mansion there and give it to her. From the siting of the house, to the digging and building of the foundations, to the pouring of the concrete, Yen handled it all. He had no architectural background, but he researched Canadian building codes, perusing books and videos to overcome obstacles.

From 2002, when ground was broken and construction began, Yen battled his atrophied muscles and osteo­por­osis and suffered several broken bones. Yet he continued with construction, insisting on laying every brick and every tile himself.

Under his skilled hand, Su­­tan of Crystal Dew, as he named the house (Su­­tan is his wife’s Chinese name), became a large-scale work of art. The inspectors who came to check on the work were full of praise for the quality of the craftsmanship, remarking that it far surpassed the work of local contractors.

In 2007, after five years of work, the mansion was finally completed.

Yen’s seal engraving

Persevering

When young, Louis Yen briefly studied painting to strengthen his seal engraving skills. Some 30 years later, in 2008, he happened to visit an exhibition of oil paintings, which reignited his interest in the art form. Lacking any real formal training, Yen says that he needed to start with the basics. Beginning with optics and visual theory, he went on to study the structure of the eye, color, shading and so forth.

Yen’s first work, Sunset over Su­tan Bay, earned praise and was given top billing at the Garibaldi Art Club’s Fall Show by vote of the more than 90 exhibiting artists. It was featured on the poster for the exhibition.

Looking at the beautiful sunset in the painting, we can practically feel the warmth of the light. But where is the Su­tan Bay that is depicted in the painting? With a mischievous twinkle in his eye, Yen reveals that Su­tan Bay is nothing but a figment of his imagination. It’s a place in his mind’s eye where he and his wife stroll while holding hands.

At one exhibition, Yen’s painting was placed in a dark corner, so that the painting, which itself had a dark background, appeared quite drab. It was then that he learned that artists were in the habit of using gallery lighting to bolster their chances at these competitions. But Yen didn’t want excessive display lighting to distort the hues of the original work. Consequently, he invented a painting technique to compensate for lighting differentials, skillfully balancing complimentary warm and cold colors, and using greys to capture fine gradations of natural light. No matter what conditions they are displayed under, his works appear to glow, as if they have been specially illuminated by a lighting expert.

Yen’s still lifes look extremely true to life, as if one could touch the objects in them. Take, for instance, his painting Jungle Juice, which earned second place at the Federation of Canadian Artists’ Still Life Show 2013. The grapes in the painting have a lustrous sheen and the slice of orange cantaloupe appears full of sweet juice. One can’t help but want to have a bite. 

Such superb paintings earned Yen an invitation to the Annual International Representational Show (AIRS) of the FCA three years in a row. After earning a name for himself in Canadian art circles, in 2016 he was named a “senior signature member” of the federation, the first person of Taiwanese descent so honored.

Building Su­tan of Crystal Dew while rising at 3 a.m. to paint overworked his muscles and accelerated their wasting. Now he often finds that he can only paint with his arms placed in hanging supports. But Yen, as if in a race against time, hopes to spend the time he has left in life in painting the beauty he holds in his mind.

In Yen’s dictionary of life experience, there is no such word as “impossible.” He has determinedly pursued his dreams, following a light that is uniquely his own.

Yen’s seal engraving

Yen’s seal engraving

Suffering several bone fractures, Yen overcame great pain and hardship to build Sutan of Crystal Dew, his mansion home that is an expression of love for his wife.

Sunset Harmony. Yen’s vivid landscape paintings evoke a strong sense of spatial depth. Viewers almost feel as if they could jump right inside them.

Blue Majesty

Mr. Frog

Jungle Juice

Years of Bounty

Forever Young

Louis Yen and his wife Susan are each other’s greatest pillar of support. In their home Su­tan of Crystal Dew, which looks like the subject of a beautiful painting itself, they live their days guided by the light of hope. (photo by Lin Min-hsuan)

Louis Yen and his wife Susan are each other’s greatest pillar of support. In their home Su­tan of Crystal Dew, which looks like the subject of a beautiful painting itself, they live their days guided by the light of hope.