Pékin Fine Arts is pleased to debut in Hong Kong recent works by artist-designer Lin Jing 林菁. Lin studied oil and mural painting at Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Art, before finishing her degree, majoring in sculpture, at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. Lin, daughter of Cantonese painter and sculptor, Lin Yu Hao 林毓豪, comes from a family with deep roots in the Chinese art world. Lin, also an independent designer of furniture, lighting, ceramics, jewelry and accessories, is well known as co-founder oftheBeijing 798 Art District pioneering concept design space, “FEI Space” (2007 – 2013). At a time when Beijing had little to no boutique scene, Lin showcased her art and designs at FEI Space, while supporting many like-minded independent designers. As a pioneering 798 resident, then a bleak and defunct factory yard, Lin was among a small group of artists blazing the trail for what would later become Beijing’s most famous art district. Lin’s passion for painting began with traditional Chinese brush painting study from the age of four. As a student in Belgium, she broadened her creative impulses to include not only painting but also sculpture, installation and design. Lin explains her natural predilection for blurring artistic boundaries, as material expression of her desire to reach out, and to engage more freely and with greater immediacy, with her viewers. Her painting practice, like her design work, aims at developing her own distinct approach. Nominally abstract, with a preference for combining colors and forms inspired by nature, Lin uses hand-applied layers of paint, filling the canvas surface. Each canvas, swathed in free-flowing color, shapes, and forms using varying tools and techniques, defies the rigidity of realistic painting and traditional paradigms. Instead, she demonstrates a panoply of skills, overlaid across one canvas, where colors are sensitively aligned; in alternating painterly applications, at once thick, scraped, brushed, and thinly washed. Her enjoyment in and active engagement with painting is palpable across her latest artworks.