The Chinese have a saying, “From heart to arm . . . To hand . . . To brush . . . To paper.” This epitomizes the concept of hsieh-i, or the “written idea,” the spontaneous, expressive approach to Chinese brush painting known as the Literati, or free-form style. In the Ch’i of the Brush, artist Nan Rae illustrates the fundamental elements and traditional motifs of the Literati style, which seeks to transcend the mere representation of a subject to capture its Ch’i, or life force, by using a minimum of brush strokes for maximum effect. In the Literati style, no sketches are prepared and no models are used; instead, the artist paints with rapid, intuitive movements of the brush that convey his or her “mind image” of the subject.