Lu Lin was born in 1962 in Jinan(famous by it's spring), Shangdong province, China. He started to paint abstract ink painting since 1985. Now, Lu Lin is the leading abstract ink painter in contemporary chinese art.
Lu Lin has found his own romantic dreamland, when he is depicting mythological beings like the Dragon, the Phoenix or the Elephant, inspired by early Daoist thinking and ancient Chinese myths. He depicts the many layers of connotation these creatures evoke in the Chinese mind. Lu Lin has mastered the key principles of Chinese ink paintings that use the Xu (Emptiness) - Shi (Solidness) approach. This gives his paintings an even deeper impression of a dreamland.
Nevertheless his technique is a unique mix of classical Chinese ink painting mixed with modern western oil painting and airbrush techniques. Lu Lin's creative process starts with the production of the canvas, which is made of a rough light brown fabric. He then applies a highly diluted pulp of traditional rice paper in a thin layer to the canvas. The texture of rough fabric with soft and thin rice paper pulp gives the painting a tender background.
Lu Lin then mixes unique oil painting techniques with feathers with the most modern airbrush technique. His creatures and landscapes evolve in motions and movements that are mainly directed by the artist's feelings of the moment. "Painting is to me a kind of Qigong exercise. I need to be in the right emotional state in order to give them the special touch I intend", explains Lu Lin. The paintings are created similar to the classical tradition of the instant brush stroke and give an impression of coming out of a romantic dream.
In his latest works Lu Lin uses mainly earthen colours that are added with special made brushes of feathers. The earthen colours help to bring the dreamscape with mystic creatures "down to earth". The paintings of Lu Lin thus are grounded and give us a direction to an emotional state of balance and harmony. They have a distinct natural feeling that could be called "sustainable" as artwork and as an expression of deep emotional intelligence.
Dragons and phoenixes have a special meaning in the Chinese culture. They are the symbols of power and happiness, of luck and recreation. They have always been associated with the "Way of Heaven", which in a Daoist version is a harmonic lifestyle with nature and the environment. Humans live in an emotional balance and are not only chasing material wealth and status, as most people do in modern society. In this respect, Lu Lin has remained also a rebel against the exaggerated modern consumerism.