Better known in his time as a musician and poet, Gyokudo did not start painting until his early forties, when he developed a unique style that reflected the wenren value of self-expression. Playfully arranging his forms, Gyokudo defies expectations of perspective by pressing the trees and rocks in the lower left quadrant against the picture plane, while allowing the water to expand into the deep distance. Rounded hillocks barrel upward to a towering peak, which, in defiance of reality, twists back to face the viewer. A pavilion with a thatched roof nestled among the trees and an empty ferryboat are the sole signs of human presence. Dabs and slashes, blunt-ended and sharply pointed strokes both define structure and create rhythm. Dark, wet ink tones firmly outline rocks and hills, while feathery, exploratory lines render the trees in the foreground wraithlike and nearly transparent.

Gyokudo always carried his Chinese zither, or qin, with him. As a true scholar-amateur, he painted only as a pastime. Copying no one, he employed traditional Chinese pictorial methods without regard for traditional techniques. Deeply subjective and self-expressive, his eccentric forms challenged his contemporaries, but modern viewers appreciate him as a great artistic genius.

What have I done with my life?
Poetry, wine, fishing, and the qin.
—From a poem by Uragami Gyokudo, 1745–1820