* 2021 Golden Tripod Award

Illustrator Shen En-Min combines images, text, geography, history, ecology, and culture as he captures the beauty of the mountains he loves, and records the stories of the people who live and do work there.

Shen En-Min loved drawing from a young age. This naturally led  to a career as a best-selling stock-image illustrator, but along the way he found he had lost his creative passion. He headed to the mountains for solace, and in the process of sketching what he encountered in the wilderness he rediscovered his love of art. Join Shen on this healing journey as he shares his sketches and notes from his mountain expeditions.

In Lessons from the Mountains, Shen combines sketches, poetry, and prose in an intimate diary-like format to record his years of journeys into the mountains. His broad ranging pen touches on everything: geography, history, ecology, and culture. Readers will follow Shen as he joins a middle school class on a wilderness adventure course, a research team tracing an ancient mountain path to interview elderly villagers, a wilderness clean-up project, and an expedition of professional rangers who discuss the challenges of protecting the forests.

In pictures and words, Shen’s work exudes simple and authentic charm. His illustrations encompass small details like the expression on the face of someone encountered along the trail, and vast mountain landscapes, giving readers the sense they are there with Shen on each of his moving journeys into the wilderness.