Painting Prac | Iris Lin

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Iris
WeiShuan
Lin

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2024

2023

2022

Novocaine Daydream
Acrylic on canvas
91.0×72.5cm

A smile can hide everything. An image is never what represents our inner desires, sorrows, and void. An image is a superficial provocation we allow others to perceive as it becomes apparent to us that we have lost in containing our own inner feelings. We numb the parts of ourselves we aren't ready to handle, and we pray that our memory fades into obscurity as every passing moment is left in the past. Do truly desire to hide from the pain by fabricating it with the conception of happiness and daydreams?

First love
Acrylic on canvas
60.5*80 cm

The moment we set our eyes on the momentum of serendipity is the moment we contract that feeling of butterflies in our stomachs. For most, it is the first time we lock eyes with our first love. The first time we see the person we know we want to spend the rest of our lives with. It's a feeling we can't quite explain on any level. We feel like we're flying and showering in golden flakes of rain that tell more about our inner thoughts than any of our emotions could ever tell. it is that first love that can never be replicated; may it end well or bad, it is an everlasting sensation.

Radiance of Death
Acrylic on canvas
91.0×72.5cm

Fire is the representation of life in many cultures, it is what religions have deemed the kindle to build our foundation. However, it is also the beginning of our end. Fire, in an instant, can be diminished by a gust. Our perception of it as a kindle to life is its ability to light the way through the darkest of nights, illuminating every dark cavern until, eventually, we radiate the final image: Our deaths.

2021

painting Whale fall When whales die they turn onto their backs and become life nutrients for hundreds of creatures in the sea. This was inspired by the death of an intimate friend when I was 19. I began to think about death and what it is. Death is when life leaves us, we expect death to always be sad, but in some senses, it is the bittersweet reminder of how beautiful life is. As the lifeless soul comes out of the body, we give a host new thriving reasons to live, just like the blue whale.

I want to fly
acrylic on canvas
230*254 mm (8.0" x 10.0")

He and She
acrylic on acrylic sheet
750*812 mm (29.5" x 32") 2 sides

Love is chosen; life is given; faith is finished.
We've fixated on the dimensions of life where love and pain are one of the same, but should we truly believe in this? Must "Love" be "Pain"? When we seek Elysium, do we hope Dystopia? The images of past choices of seduction and reduced self-worth are taken by what we can only know as unadulterated solitude. I took the images of what progresses as life moves forward throughout time as love is found and love is formed, from the initial contact to the growing lustful desire we all seek. What hidden are the nuanced caveats of what can only be in the privacy of our rooms and forever in the crevasses of our minds?
I use cubism to encapsulate moving forward, but as the girl looks back only to see the approaching teal, through the darkness, the danger is already coming. Using red, blue, yellow, and green to show that sexual assault surrounds us even when we see everyone as normal, we can never know who's facing assault.

Champagne zemblanity
acrylic on canvas
406*508mm (16.0" x 20.0")

A beautiful ocean we have yet to fully understand, but are so willing to destroy. We have eradicated marine life faster than every species before us combined, yet we still continue to. The half whole and skeleton-bodied marine life swim across a champagne littered ocean representing the effect capitalistic greed has done on the world and the life that lives in it. Growing up in the city, I never got to see the stars or the galaxy above, I only saw the effects of a dying world.

look at me
acrylic and gold leaf on canvas
610*762mm (24.0" x 30.0")

What is "Beauty"? Is it the extra tight stomach, the large round chest, or the curved waste? I am representing a girl with excess fat on her stomach as she imagines the eyes of society staring at her in disgust. The gold flakes represent how the eyes hold currency to determine her physical value, and her skin is paled green in the sickness of refusing to appreciate her body. She is sick but silent as the world determines with a hundred wide eyes. Beauty comes in all shapes, sizes, and skin tones.

A Breath Away
Acrylic on canvas
740*550 mm (29.1" x 21.7")

Like life, we are constantly falling as we are only ever able to gaze into the past and never the future, we risk the possibility of savior or danger. The hand is a representation of the empathy that surrounds our futures as we fall back into the unknown, the structures that are built and the memories that have passed and rotted like a dying tree second away from vanishing. The snake hold surrounds the ever-lurking empathy of what comes, always prepared to attack at a moments notice as a reminder that life is not without its venomous dangers but through the end it is only these dangers and unforeseeable risks are we able to reap the golden medal reward. The snake represents the blood cut from the veins of the body as it reaps itself to achieve the golden medal hanging from its neck. The girl falling is the sacrifice of her life stuck in purgatory, I wanted to create a contrasting development between the cute and dreamy and the ever-lurching danger as I was inspired by Kazuhiro Hori's dreams to use colorful environments with sweet pain to fabricate nightmare.

Scarlet Parturition
Acrylic on canvas
910*605 mm (35.8" x 23.8")

The feminist reproduction of a pregnant woman is inspired by the writings of Simone De Beauvoir, author of The Second Sex, as she develops the sight of men's view of women within society's walls. Presenting herself, faceless as it represents every woman, as nothing more than an object of blood and misery. The brushwork is harsh and rounded to confine the aspects of a scarlet blotch of sorrow.

2020

Socially Prescribed Perfectionism
acrylic on canvas
725*530 mm (28.5" x 20.9")

"I want to be perfect, I want the caress of the sun against my skin, I want to reach excellence because I want to reach other people's expectations. Yet, even with the warmth of so many, I look down upon what I have become. Is it the fear of losing what I never had? or is it the pain of dissappointing those who had?
Using the basic building fundamentals of acrylic on canvas, I evoke a personification of myself as both people represent a figment of my inner and outer personality, as the inner me is breaking itself to keep up, the outer superficial me looks down at the defeated inner-self. Prescribed by society to be an unstoppable juggernaut without weakness. I took inspiration from Salvador Dali's ""Birth of a Goddess"" in order to create the melting man (my outer self) that looks down upon the failing me.

Princess in the war
acrylic on canvas
550*460 mm (21.7" x 18.1")

"A princess in the midst of a war. An innocence within the confines of a world left with greed. I was inspired to picture myself in a warzone personifying the many innocent girls on the battlefield being curressed only by the souls of her parents. ""All is fair in love and war."" Is it? What about the girls who look for more in life, who never had a chance to start? No life of pain and sorrow is meant for the girls in the warzones of the world.
I used acrylic paint to garner middle eastern backgrounds as I use common brushstrokes to exhibit the simplicity in terror as the greatest fears and sorrows in life come from, contrary to the quote, the most likely of places.

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