Born in Hsinying, Tainan in 1938, Lin Jia-yan graduated from National Tainan Industrial High School in 1956 and started working at Taiwan Power Company in the same year. During his service there, he met Lin Sheng-hsiung who introduced him to work at Lin Tien-jui Art Center after finishing the mandatory military service in 1961. Under the guidance of Lin Tien-jui, he had developed his own perspective on art. With the Lin brothers as his companions, the three of them inspired each other that they should never give up painting. In an occasion, he met Ku Hsien-liang who encouraged him and convinced him that he was destined to be a painter. In 1962, he received the Mayor Award of Kaohsiung City Young Artists Exhibition. In 1967, he held his first solo exhibition. In 1974, he returned to his hometown, Hsinying, to take care of his sick mother and made a living by running a business. During his stay in Hsinying, he had never stopped painting. In 1991, he ended his business career when he made a success in it and decided to fully devote himself to painting. Since then, he has often traveled with his fellow painters and painted together. He held his second solo exhibition in 1995 and organized “The Art Exhibition of Five Painters from Kaohsiung” with Lin Tien-jui, Wang Kuo-chen, Lin Sheng-hsiung, and Huang Chao-mo in 1997. In 2006, he was invited by Cheng Shiu University Art Center to hold a solo exhibition there. Throughout his life, he has demonstrated great devotion to painting.

When it is about art-making, Lin Jia-yan believes that “we should work on the software first, then the hardware later.” This short statement reveals that humanity is the priority of art-making. In other words, only when the concept is developed can we visualize it through the skill. Therefore, there should be a more profound conversation between viewers and the work beyond its physical form and appearance.

We meet and we say goodbye, in this life and also the many previous lives. The time tunnel, fossils and shells symbolize antiquity. The human figure and the dog are one another’s protagonists. (Written by LIN Jia-Yan on November 13, 2014)

Lin Jia-yan is a very special painter in the post-war Taiwan. Without any academic training, he followed Lin Tien-jui, who was his teacher as well as his friend, into the world of art-making while working with him. Since Lin Jia-yan had his unique perspective on painting, he had established his personal style in spite of his association with Lin Tien-jui. In 1967, he held his solo exhibition “Lin Jia-yan – the Devilish Painter.” The exhibition attracted the public’s attention, while some described it as “an art exhibition full of the horrible images such as death, storms, monsters, ghosts, nightmares, deformities, demons, and cobwebs.” It indeed shocked the conservative society at that time. Such a unique style soon became the main theme of his artistic practice. Later, he had vanished from the art society for almost twenty years because of his family condition. In 1995, he held his second art exhibition, which demonstrated his great devotion to art-making. Lin Jia-yan’s painting style mostly features certain kind of mysterious metaphors such as the surrealistic expression, no matter whether it is about human figures or landscape. This unique quality had been deeply engraved in his soul. When he was still an elementary student, he saw the local elite Huang Ma-tien being executed by shooting during the 228 Massacre. The traumatized childhood created a sense of loss, through which he perceived the mundane world in a more profound philosophical way. The inspiration of his art was the influence from the society where he grew up in instead of the inheritance from the Western art.