When I look at Shang Tao's work, at how he uses brush and ink to create the Chinese literati painting aesthetics of simplicity and spatial contrast, I tend to forget that he is painting a flower or a certain subject, only noticing the great artistic potential of the ink at the tip of his brush; he is truly an artist of minimalism but also of complex emotions who, as a pioneer and inheritor of aesthetics and Chinese culture, is to be greatly admired.