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Lin Yuan was born in 1913 in Nantou County. When he was little, he attended public school for two months and quitted when his older brother passed away. He helped his father to support the family by becoming a farmer. Besides farming, he was also engaged in quarrying, planing wood, etc.
In 1978, Lin Yuan ended his farming career and retired at age of 65. He then began carving stones and said, “I was only playing with the stones just like my son-in-law did. How did I know this is called carving?” He also added, “I have a desire to carve whenever I see a stone. It makes me very happy when I carve a stone into shape.” At the beginning, he only carved to make plant pots, food vessels, and other practical utensils. As his interest intensified, stone sculptures of various human and animals were created. Later on, Lin’s stone carving had caught the attention of Yuyu Yang, Zhu Ming, Xi Dejin, and other artists. Even French contemporary artist Jean Dubuffe (1901-1985) collected his works. Stone carving accounted for the majority of Lin’s works with about 3,000 stone carving pieces. He mainly uses river stones for carving because they have less cracks and edges, which allow him to carve forms that are more in line with his preferences. For his figurine carvings, Lin emphasizes on the faces and sexual organs while the feet are rarely seen. Furthermore, the narrative style and shallow engraved lines are also features of his works. Besides stone carvings, Lin also made wood carvings. However, many of the wood carvings have decayed. A small portion of them were made into copper sculptures by Mr. Huang Bingsong who is Lin’s long time sponsor, and are kept in the New Era Art Resort in Puli, Nantou.
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| Lin Yuan’s Wife (A-ST-LU-NR-55),stone carving, year unknown | Regional King (A-WD-LU-20), wood carving, 1987 |
In 1981, Lin visited Taiwanese folk artist Hung Tung. The details of the visit were unknown. However, Lin began to produce large numbers of paintings after the visit. Especially between 1988 to the year he passed away in 1991, he has created astonishing number of paintings. This could be his aging body became hard to handle strenuous carving.
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| Lin Yuan was painting |
At the beginning, Lin Yuan drew on monthly calendar, daily calendar, or a notebook with pens or color pens. In the later period, he mainly used oil and cement-based paint with brushes. He also began experimenting with plastic sheets, pot lids, wood, linen, Kraft Paper, and liked to paint long paintings. Paint drops and lines are techniques frequently seen in Lin’s paintings. Subjects of his paintings mostly came from daily life, or in Lin’s words “mountains and waters, gods and ghosts, and ladies’ thighs.” They include animals (personifies), folk deities such as Earth God and Mazu, and many nude persons with sexual characteristics. For the use of colors, he used more red, yellow, green, and black between 1983 and 1987. After 1990, he used mainly brown and blue.
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| Paper mold painting 21 (B-P7-LU-21), year unknown | Cotton paper painting, 1990 |
When Lin’s children got married or moved into new houses, they received embroidered artworks from their father as gifts. The embroideries were often made with high saturation or fluorescent wool sewed on linen or Aboriginals’ fabrics, which are bright and eye-catching. Moreover, Lin was also good at reusing wastes to make household products, toys for his grandchildren or artworks. Works that required welding were rather difficult. He learned welding techniques from his son-in-law who worked at an iron factory. Thus, Lin went to Puli frequently, not to visit his daughter, but his son-in-law.
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| Mixed medium 01, year unknown | Mixed medium 02, 1988 |
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| Embroidery on linen (C-MA-LU-17), 1983 |
In 1980, Huang Bingsong, founder of Puli Nostalgia magazine visited Lin for the first time and purchased 20 pieces of Lin’s carvings on the spot. This was Lin’s first sale and also the beginning of their cooperation. Huang spared no effort in funding and promoting Lin’s creation. He even built the New Era Art Park to display Lin’s carvings and invited Lin to settle and create in the Park. In 1991, Lin was hospitalized due to sickness. During his stay, he told his family repeatedly, “I still have many stories that need to carve. Ask the doctor to cure me soon.” However, on September 21, Lin left this world at age of 79.
