From the geometric aspect, Kandinsky believes that a “point” is where three invisible plains meet. Therefore, the size of it equals “zero,” which signifies “commencement,” “origine” – “origo” in Latin. From the aspect of spirituality, “le point mystique” means “secret maçonnique.” In other words, it is “le grand dans l’infinitésimal” – the “divinité,” the “infini,” the most powerful of the smallest signs. It is the element representing “origin,” “regeneration,” and “initiation.” (Wassily Kandinsky, Écrits complets-La synthèse des arts, Denoël-Gonthier, Paris, 1975, p.223.)
Therefore, when painters are painting, their bodies serve as the bridge between the spirit of the painters and Nature. They open up themselves to the world. Painters’ action is not determined by the spirit alone. Instead, “it is the natural extension and maturation of visuality.” In other words, painters need to work on the thoughts and the emotions evoked by Nature rather than painting on the basis of nothing. Spirituality is not what you paint with. It is necessary to experience the process from the eyes, to the heart, and finally to the hand. It proves that painting is nothing like an exact representation of the reality while it cannot be separate from the reality either. Painting is the mixture of objects and spirits, as how Maurice Merleau-Ponty puts it “no matter whether it is realistic or not, lines are neither the imitation of objects nor the objects themselves.”
For her, painting is her labor-intensive work. The days spent in her studio, where she takes advantage of the color spectrum of natural lighting, crystalize her labor into a precious gem. The great amount of water-based pigments used in her works such as watercolor or acrylic paint reveals her eagerness to express herself through art and to establish her signature. She also utilized a palette knife to scratch and flatten the base paint, making it a thin transparent membrane, on which the artist creates a layered plane of splendid visual intensity characterized with splash, script, and scrape. The subject of the paintings does not seem to be a priority to Lin, after all, it is quite impossible to find an untouched subject in the category of figurative painting. Therefore, Lin focused more on the techniques. She lets her eyes and hands to replace mind and brain. The paint’s spontaneous flow follows the movement of the hand, establishing a unique artistic style different from any painter before her.
Consequently, artistic practice – or “the freedom of expression” as how we usually define it – celebrates not only the individual’s inner reaction but also the interrelation among one’s cultural experience, artistic context, the materiality of media, and the life journey of an individual. Similarly, the effects of three different visual experiences can be discovered in Kuei-Hua Lin’s works: first of all, the context of “painterliness” in the tradition of painting; secondly, the camera angle in photography; thirdly, the dislocation of printing or superimposition in the image-base art history……Lin”s art is close to the painterly concept. In her artmaking, she not only freedom of painting executed by her hand. Therefore, most of her previous works feature a greater spontaneity thanks to the flowing lines and dripping =effect of water-based pigments.
“Renaissance theorist Leon Battista Alberti’s “Window”, still deeply influences our visionary experience. In his De Pictura created in 1435, he talked about the origin of painting,”……First of all about where I draw. I inscribe a quadrangle of right angles, as large as I wish, which is considered to be an open window through which I see what I want to paint.”
Lin’s new works are obviously based on the family photos. Although she expresses it in paintings, the composition and framing are full of the touch of photography. It is interesting how reproducing the ordinary family photos in the expression of paintings can produce such refreshing result…….. Moreover, family photo is not only an essential tool to explore the daily lives, it also serves as meaningful and unique images. When choosing the topic, the capturer especially loves the beautiful and joyful moments to beautify family’s common memory…….What is Lin expressing through a family photo album like this? I do not think she is simply criticizing the worried social phenomenon of additions to electronics. I am also not sure if she feels different, lost, or sorry that family is different today compared to the past. Her perspective is not quite clear. Especially when the identification of these family portraits are faded by her painting techniques, there is no evidence showing these photos originally belong to whom, to which particular family and their story. Just like Susan Sontag said,“ No matter whom is photographed, photos will convert to reality. The images of objects or incidents can be beautiful or scary, or unbearable, or tolerant even if they are not in reality.”With the interference of arrangement of images and the painting method, Lin presented a series of paintings that rely on the audience memory and imagination.
Lin’s works have obvious photographic angle. This has to do with her material obtained from cameras. In her earlier works which focused on plants, you can close-ups on various plants. A corner in the flower bushes, for example, or the end of a branch, these is never a complete scene in the imagery, no horizon nor linear prospective for space structure. In the current works, the photographic materials are acquired from daily lives, mostly indoor. The figures in paintings usually concentrate on staring at mobile phones and tablets, other than that, there is no other arrangement of narrative or imagery structure. Therefore, there is always incomplete and pieces of shape or object in Lin’s works, incomplete, unlike the stage setting. They are pretended three dimensional elements compressed in a two dimensional frame. The complete timeline in classical narrative is shuttered into pieces of life. This concept of shuttered time is influenced by the modern society. The “Modernism” in 1863, as Charles Baudelaire said, “ the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent” would appear to be stronger in the 21 century with the data explosion and internet. , Lin’s works present remarkable life style of today. It might be called some kind of genre painting in the 21st century, composed by the contemporary life intertwined with painting, photography, and monitor and behind the scene.