about the artist

Lin Chau

Based in Scotland

 

Lin Chau’s practice is underpinned by her connection to the world and the environment that she finds herself within. Over the years, her encounters of landscapes in nature have inspired her works. As drawing has been the core of her practice, each trip to the mountain or the sea naturally sees her sketching the landscape. The impressions from these sketches are later transformed using a variety of media from printmaking to filmmaking, as part of Lin’s exploration of creative techniques that elicit diverse ways of looking at the interaction of places and landscapes.

 

The works in Moving Landscapes are a direct response to Lin’s visual experiences of natural sites in the UK and Scotland, in particular, which she visited due to the pandemic restrictions on international travel. While immersed in the landscapes, she sketched extensively, drawn to the vitality and movement around her. The energy and dynamism of the sea, the changing colour of the sky, and the interplay of light and shadow in the waves and fields are all elements that she tried to capture. As with most of Lin’s work, her sketches became her aide-mémoire and were further developed into prints using different printmaking techniques such as etching, monoprint and Chine-collé to convey the sense of a place.

The process of drawing, painting, and printing informs the eventual pieces, and when viewing the works, we are led to venture beneath the surface to experience their making. The flowing strokes of a Chinese brush on Xuan paper, for example, give rise to unexpected variations of hues and lines, hinting at the techniques Lin employs. The influence of Chinese brush painting techniques stems from her five-month training at the School of Chinese Painting in the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Bejing in 2012, which liberated her artistic approach and guided her choice of material. *The video shown in the exhibition illustrates the methods used to create this group of work. Each work typically goes through many stages of development until a meaningful depiction emerges. Aiming to blur the line between abstraction and representation, Lin invites the viewers to let the unconscious lead the way and to wander, imagine, and dream.