In Search of Light — The Art of Paul Chiang
For more than half a century, the art of Paul Chiang has revolved around a single, enduring theme: light.
Across solitude, uncertainty, breakthrough, and renewal, Chiang has transformed each chapter of life into artworks that are both quiet and resilient. In his work, light is never just a reflection of nature—it is an inner conviction, a spiritual presence, and a symbol of hope.
This exhibition traces his creative journey through three states of spirit: Seeking Light → Encountering Light → Becoming Light.
Seeking Light
This section reveals Chiang’s struggles during his dark years and his period of shuttered-window creation. Works such as Notre Dame de Paris, Transfigured Night, Hundred Year Temple, and Silver Lake belong to this stage.
Rendered mainly in black, white, gray, and brown, these paintings are built up through layering, scraping, and overwriting—like finding a path through fog. Beneath the density, faint but steady points of brightness remain, symbols of hope that endures. Silver Lake especially reflects this era, created amid his daughter’s illness and his own creative impasse, yet sustained by a belief that light would return.
Encountering Light
A turning point came with Chiang’s move to Taitung. The natural light, the Pacific sky and sea, and the layered hues of the mountains rekindled his language of color. His works became bright, fluid, richly colored, and full of movement. Mountain Range of Taiwan captures shifting light under changing weather, while Pisirian embodies a creative rebirth—where culture, nature, and emotion meet, and color unfolds freely as though illuminated from within.
Becoming Light
This final chapter is a way of living as light. Images of the Paul Chiang Art Center in Jinzun mark the culmination of his lifelong pursuit—light expressed through the land, architecture, and landscape.
Here, art extends beyond the canvas and becomes a serene presence of light in the lives of others. The Art Center is also a long-term social endeavor co-founded with Stanley Yen and many supporters, carrying the hope of connecting Taiwan with the world and presenting a vision of everyday cultural richness—art as a bridge through which light continues to be shared.
Throughout the exhibition, each label notes the age at which Chiang created the work. As you move through the exhibition, you may find reflections of your own journey: At this moment, what are you seeking? What are you facing? And where is your light leading you?
May this journey toward light accompany you as you walk through the gallery.
Light does not need to be dazzling—it only needs to guide.
May you find your own light here.
Encountering Light 1-1: Mountain Range of Taiwan series
Age 75. Paul Chiang longed to live by the sea. For five years, he and his wife often set out from Taipei at daybreak, traveling along Taiwan’s east coast, passing through Yilan and Hualien until they finally settled in Jinzun. These journeys shaped his impressions of shifting mountain light into the Mountain Range of Taiwan series.
Encountering Light 1-2: Pisirian
Age 67. Pisirian is the first series Paul Chiang created after moving to Taitung. For the first time, the canvas bursts with colors resembling blooming flowers—vivid reds, soft pinks, blues, and bright yellows. In this work, he breaks through the limits of his previous palette, filling the picture with the atmosphere and vitality of spring.
Age 68. Among Paul Chiang’s own favorites, the horizontal flow marks in the center and upper-left emerged naturally during the creative process. The subtle pale blue and yellow hues emit a gentle radiance, evoking a sense of clarity and quiet luminosity—timeless and harmonious.
Age 69. Immersed in Taitung’s moonlit sea, Paul Chiang created this work as a reflection of a sky washed in moonlight and a sea carrying its shimmering path of light. Fantastical hues ripple across the water, the canvas holding a quiet, breathing interplay of light and shadow.
Age 69. Immersed in Taitung’s moonlit sea, Paul Chiang created this work as a reflection of a sky washed in moonlight and a sea carrying its shimmering path of light. Fantastical hues ripple across the water, the canvas holding a quiet, breathing interplay of light and shadow.
Age 73. The sea in Paul Chiang’s paintings finally emerged in blue. The sea is like a lens, constantly refracting shifting light into colors unseen on land. Living beside the ocean, he sees endless variations of sea and sky—each a quiet movement in nature’s unfolding symphony.
Seeking Light 1-1: Notre Dame de Paris, Transfigured Night, Hundred Year Temple, Meditation on Eternity series
Age 40. While living in New York, Paul Chiang returned to Paris and painted this piece with his windows shut, capturing Notre-Dame in an unusual, quiet stillness. When he completed it, he felt—for the first time—that he truly had the right to call himself an artist.
Age 40. In this darkened view of Notre-Dame, Paul Chiang renders the monumental cross and its white light in a space between abstraction and figuration. A quiet spiritual undertone permeates the work, suggesting an inner longing for light after years of self-doubt.
Age 52. “Purification” is one of the defining themes of Paul Chiang’s work—an inner path he continually returns to. Throughout his long artistic journey, he has upheld this pursuit of spirituality as a guiding aspiration.
Age 55. Returning to Taiwan, Paul Chiang felt a renewed connection to the land, culture, and memories evoked by temple scenes—the dragon pillars, incense, candlelight, and drifting smoke. His Hundred Year Temple series became a cornerstone of his artistic presence in Taiwan’s art world.
Age 55. The heavy, layered brushstrokes on both sides of the canvas rise like towering dragon pillars. At the center, a small, warm point of light evokes the gentle glow that accompanies and sustains. With technique refined over 30 years abroad, Paul Chiang’s work carries the East’s warmth and inner light.
Age 55. Newly returned to Taiwan, Paul Chiang’s modest studio did nothing to dim his day-and-night passion for creation. These paintings carry his layered memories, faith, and sense of belonging, their golden-bronze light symbolizing a warm, enduring, ever-present glow.
Age 59. Paul Chiang turned his gaze toward a vaster cosmos, using deep blue, black, and stardust-like points of light. For him, the universe is not an external scene but a path inward—toward a broader, more expansive state of being.
Seeking Light 1-2: Silver Lake, Pisirian
Age 64. A decade after returning to Taiwan, Paul Chiang found himself at a creative crossroads, yearning for a new direction. “For an artist, proficiency can be a beautiful trap,” he said. With his elder daughter’s illness, he faced a twofold challenge in both life and creation.
Age 66. He seemed to dwell in a long night, waiting for light. In the end, he created the Silver Lake series in black and white. It appears to depict a lake and moonlight, but is in fact the reflection of his own state of mind—waiting for light in the darkness and ultimately finding it.
Age 70. After settling in Taitung, the Silver Lake series has taken on the deep blues and ocean air of the coast. The canvas suggests the boundless Pacific, where sea and sky blur into a soft, luminous white—an image of life opening toward clarity and calm.
Age 73. As night descended, Taitung’s moonlight settled quietly on the water, casting a reflection both tranquil and deep. Through shifting tones of deep blue and gold that intertwine, Paul Chiang evokes the moment moonlight meets the night—capturing the quiet, timeless breath between moonlight, water, and time.
Age 80. His pure and transparent color conveys a quiet, distilled clarity. The Silver Lake series feels like a faint gleam gliding across the sea, where small waves shimmer and a silver ribbon drifts through deep blue—carrying a light that is tranquil and far-reaching in the night.
