I would sum up the philosophy of traditional Chinese landscape painting as “regarding Nature as your teacher outside and using your spirit or intellect as your creative source inside”. Landscape paintings need to be created from both scenery in the natural environment and your creative vision. Chinese artists in past dynasties were looking for the creation process, characters to express this, and also the inner relationship between them.
“Regarding Nature as one's teacher outside” does not mean only painting the appearance of a mountain and brook, but also means feeling the spirit of cosmology and biology, turning the scenery of nature into scenery of the heart and into paintings, to give the spirit form and create the ideal vision of landscape as seen in the artist’s mind.
Because of the diversity of artists’ characters and personalities, and the diversity of their skills, feelings, and aesthetics, the style of every artist varies. In their own way, each artist discards the gross and selects the essential, eliminates the false and keeps the true. The artist gets in touch with the outside world and unites this with their inner world.
