by Richard MC Chang (Translation by Timothy Chang)
Lin Li-li’s glue color or mineral pigment (Nihonga) on silk paintings posses a faint nostalgic atmosphere. They appear as impressions or thoughts frozen deep in one’s memory. While holding both a Bachelor and Master of Fine Art from Tunghai University, the centre of mineral pigment painting in Taiwan, her works differ greatly from the conventional grand and elaborate style traditionally associated with the genre.
Lin’s color palette is elegantly muted, and her brushwork is consisting of primarily of light washes, thus her images appear shrouded in mist with strong temporal quantities. Her subject matter is drawn from her own personal experiences, where ordinary everyday scenes are sentimentalized under her brush. Either depicting a corner of a room, a set of chairs, a small storefront, or modest old house, her images are calming and serene, evoking the viewer’s own memories to be projected onto the painting.
A small room of a bathhouse with Mount Fuji outside of its window is an unforgettable scene in Lin Li-li’s memory. The brushwork and lines of Bathhouse with View of Mount Fuji have an amateurish charm, where the old bathhouse room appears both shrouded in steam and lost in time, perfect for the mind to linger and reflect.
