About the Artist

Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Lin Wei is a Taiwanese Nihonga artist who works between Taipei and Japan. Her father, a teacher and specialist in Chinese literature and education, was also skilled in calligraphy and profoundly influenced her early interest in traditional Chinese art.

Lin Wei received academic training in Chinese painting, Japanese painting, and Western oil painting, and specializes in portraiture and bird-and-flower painting. Her works are primarily created on Japanese silk using mineral and plant-based pigments, animal glue, and ink.

Blending Eastern and Western aesthetics, she reinterprets classical beauty from a contemporary perspective, developing a distinctive contemporary expression of bijinga—the Japanese tradition of depicting beautiful women.

Lin Wei’s art works are influenced by Japanese culture and the natural environment while she carries on the traditional Chinese drawing styles of royal palace artists. After moving to Japan, she was impressed by the beauty of kimonos (Japanese traditional dress) and by the attention paid to the natural four seasons. She was influenced particularly by the original art works of beautiful women by three major Japanese beauty painters (Shoen Uemura, Kiyokata Kaburaki, Shinsui Ito) and impressed by their graceful kimono models. She has turned these into her own style. Her art works are full of rich mystery, and the gleam of natural gold on canvas is eternal enough to attract attention from around the world.

Lin Wei, as a 21st century artist, moved to Japan in 2010 to practice her art while she became a PhD candidate in 2014 to acquire Doctor of Philosophy in 2017. Her goals are to record what she witnesses in modern life and to use culture to build bridges of understanding around the world.

Area of research

Cross-cultural communication, museum studies, art creation using eastern painting materials.