Lin Xue

Born in 1968 in Fujian, China, Lin Xue is a self-taught artist who currently lives

and works in Hong Kong. Ever since relocating to Hong Kong at the young age

of 5, Lin has long loved the outdoors and has made countless excursions into

Shing Mun Country Park near his home in the New Territories and has even

spent some years living in a remote mountain range in the mainland, as many

Chinese literati did in the past when they sought solitude and inspiration.

As a result, Lin creates works that, from a distance, resemble Chinese

landscape paintings of rugged mountains or ornamental scholars' rocks

but, upon closer inspection, reveal fantastical little worlds made of the plants

and animal life that inhabit our ecosystem. These natural scenes of minute

creatures and vegetation possess a mystical beauty where organic materials

are half-familiar and half-dreamt. Lin's infinitely intricate ink works are

created through a meditative and intuitive process in which he painstakingly

marks the canvas with a sharpened twig, the most elemental method of

painting. His works have been exhibited at the 55th Venice Biennale, Tokyo

International Forum, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong Art Centre and

the Asia Art Museum in San Francisco.