Taiwan, internationally renowned for its high-tech industry, has little room for artistic creation. Professional artists have limited space to survive, especially over the last decade when investors with deep pockets have been reluctant to spend money on art.

But young artists have managed to not only survive but stand out in a highly competitively market where the rate of failure is high.

At 36, Tsai Yi-ju is among a generation of Taiwanese painters who refer to themselves as professional artists.

Tsai is known for his ink-brush abstract paintings and in 2010, saw his name listed alongside world-famous Zao Wou-ki in a directory of ethnically Chinese abstract artists published by the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, which named Tsai as one of the youngest influential painters in the world.

Though he considers himself lucky to finally be able to live a relatively decent life solely on proceeds from the sale of his art works, Tsai has gone through a great deal of hardship to get to where he is now.

“For several months in 2006, I ate only toast and drank water every day,” he recalls. “I’d spent all my money on pigments and canvases in preparation for my first major solo exhibition.

“It was probably the hardest time but it was also the most spiritually fulfilling. I knew what I really wanted, and he spent every day trying to fulfil my dream.

A Taipei native, Tsai said he has loved drawing things since he was a child.

He was also very good at it, winning one award after another, even though nobody in his family has ever worked in an art-related area.

During his junior and senior high school years, however, he stopped drawing, because like every other Taiwanese student of his generation, he had to study hard so that he could enter a better school.

He did not pick up his brush until his final year of senior high and only then because he needed to take advantage of his artistic talent to enter university.

In order to prepare, Tsai enrolled in an “art cram school” for a year and successfully entered National Chiayi Teachers College in southern Chiayi County.

To keep him occupied in a largely rural area, he focused on artistic creation and once again fell in love with art.

“I spent so much time drawing – and did not even return to my home in Taipei during long breaks – that my teachers and advisers had to ask me to visit my family,” he says.

“But I was happy painting. Then as now it gives me pleasure and satisfaction that I can’t find anywhere else.”

He was later was accepted by the same university’s graduate school in visual arts and continued his efforts to develop as an artist.

After graduating and completing compulsory military service, Tsai continued to work towards his artistic future.

After several months of living on bread and water, he won the Liu Kuo-song Award in the first Taipei Contemporary Ink Painting competition in 2006.

The honour not only afforded him a major boost in confidence, but also allowed him to walk away with NT$100,000 (Bt108,000) in prize money.

“I spent all the prize money buying pigments and canvases in preparation,” he noted.

With the money as a start-up fund, Tsai managed to survive by selling his art works alone.

Over the decade, he has held more than a dozen solo and joint exhibitions locally and internationally, including most recently in Japan in 2012 and in South Korea in 2015.

His works have been added to the collections of Taiwan’s national museums, including the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art, while other works have been bought by private collectors.

“It’s been a gamble but I have no regrets. No one forced me to take up this career and while I am not thriving financially, I live a spiritually fulfilling life,” he says.

“I feel alive only when I am painting, and this feeling is what keeps me doing what I do. It’s a soul-searching process but it’s very worthwhile.”