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These paintings originate from lake shore views that shift between the familiar and the strange. Body parts, insects, goddesses, and totems are discovered in reflections of trees and boulders along the edge of the water. The uncanny symmetries become Rorschach tests—ambiguous and contradictory, both vulnerable and invincible. Are they harmful or helpful?  Natural or artificial?  Fecund or toxic? The figure/spirit is split between solid and liquid, both the known and its altered mirror, the conscious and unconscious.  In these beings, the condition of Earth, body, and painting converge, similarly structured by dualities and contradictions.

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A kind of phenomenological flickering—achieved through closely observed but oddly hued details—conveys both immediacy and the transience of nature.  Disorienting color relationships disrupt spatial logic but then reconfigure new networks; push-pull tensions evolve into a shimmer.  Flux opens the way for regeneration.  Over time, stones entangled within roots begin to resemble the cosmos; a flayed torso glimpsed beneath an overturned tree gives way to spring growth.  Through the process of painting, an eco-system, albeit contingent, dissolvable, and mysterious, begins to flourish.

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From an Asian-American immigrant’s experience of dislocation, misunderstanding, and adaptation arises a freely shifting point of view that intertwines Western and Eastern concerns.  The Surrealist subconscious informs the gestural urgency of Abstract Expressionism. The traveler’s view in Chinese landscape parallels the non-hierarchical, leveling gaze of digital technology.  Dutch Golden Age attentiveness to mapping and detail contextualizes meditative calligraphic mark-making.  Out of these convergences, a hybrid vision emerges—nourished by the wondrous and cyclical--if precarious--natural world.

Cynthia Lin 
April, 2026