Sheila Isham’s China sojourn (1962–1965) proved foundational for her aesthetic sensibilities. Immersing herself in the study of ancient forms of calligraphy and the philosophy that underpinned it required extraordinary discipline and perseverance, both of which drove her creative process and fostered a formal painting style that melded her traditional Western art training—the tactile brush stroke, airbrush techniques, compositional concerns, color theory—with a visual vocabulary elicited from the symbolic power of Chinese hieroglyphs as well as the sensed understanding of infinite space, both internal and metaphysical. During this period, Isham took many of her titles from the names of the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching, the ancient taxonomy of the universe dating from about 1050 BCE. Its oracular interpretations have been foundational for countless discipline—from the arts and religion to state governance and science in both the East and West. The English translations Isham appends to the Chinese come from the translation by the Jungian Cary F. Baynes of Richard Wilhelm’s 1924 German translation of the I Ching.