Li Hou’s work is a study in semiotics. His ink paintings are composed according to contemporary style. He dithers his lines and carefully stages ink splatters to give them a feeling of spontaneity; these pseudo-random patterns build up a complex texture for the paintings. It simultaneously expresses cheerfulness and rationality, vitality and deliberation.

Now at the age of sixty, Cen is still actively developing as an artist, continually incorporating his ideas, philosophies, and experiences into the substructure of his painting. I am truly impressed by Cen’s relentless drive to perfect his art, which incidentally reminds me of a passage in Jean-Christophe—“Most men die at twenty or thirty; thereafter they are only reflections of themselves: for the rest of their lives they are aping themselves, repeating from day to day more and more mechanically and affectedly what they said and did and thought and loved when they were alive.” Cen refuses to rest on laurels and wallow in old achievements, rather, he is an artist who embraces the boldness of the present and the hope of the future.