Ms. LIN Xiaochu acquired her essentials of painting during the period at the Fine Arts School and the Second Studio in the Oil-Painting Department of CAFA, and showed certain personality in her bachelor-degree works Eyeing Series. It was just at the turn of the century when processes of modernization and urbanization had gained some speed in China, which were sensitively caught and artistically expressed in those works of Ms. LIN's, where she accordingly adopted relatively modern painting languages such as "linear" formal elements in composition and "showcases" for imagery. The series could be assessed as moderately special and novel against standards of the time.

　　Nevertheless, Ms. LIN began to search for transfer during her graduate studying in my First Studio. Two stages could be observed evidently of her transfer.

　　The first was towards classic during her master-degree studying, when I often drew models myself together with the graduates in my own style, as represented by the Shaven-Headed Nude, which tended to be classic and naturally affected the graduates including Ms. LIN. As a result, her master-degree works The Girl with Her Sea and Taste of Colyx Tea presented aspects rather different in forms from but still linked in contents to her Eyeing Series. The themes were both concerned with city lives as viewed from young eyes, while the subject-matter had changed to figures at the center of composition with classic methods utilized.

　　The second transfer happened within her doctor-degree studying period, when her products showed even more obvious changes. Such works as The Afternoon Tea and The Dinner had multi figures as the subject-matter and pointillism as the technique, reflecting impacts of impressionism.

　　It is rare for a young person to go through such drastic changes in his/her studying processes for becoming a painter. Usually a certain style or technique, once learned, will follow him/her until he/she becomes mature to some degree. This is also true to many painters in the history, who might keep only one style all their life. But up to her doctoral graduation exhibition, which has just closed now, we have seen a couple of changes in Ms. LIN, which are rather precious but also sufficiently difficult.

　　I was able to feel the difficulties Ms. LIN encountered and the efforts she made during her growing processes. In her insistent pursuit of transfer she must have paid painstaking efforts, especially when the subject-matter was changed to require multi-figure compositions which largely differed from and much more complicated than her original relatively simple style of single portrait with certain settings. Such a transfer demanded expressing a group of figures related to each other as well as to the indoor and outdoor environments, for which she seemed insufficiently prepared in terms of techniques due to lacking in practice. This was why her recent creation appeared so hard. Such hardness, however, would be inevitable even for a mature artist if he/she sets out on a new exploration, and adequately reflected her artistic ideal of pursuing novelty and her determination to realize it.

　　I am encouraged by the artistic appearance stemming from and the preliminary results already obtained by her to expect that Ms. LIN will continue her exploration according to her own interests while taking into account more difficulties and strengthening herself with ever sounder foundations in form-modeling and color-manipulating in order to attain more obvious successes.

JIN Shangyi

Oct. 2010

（Reprint of the "Introduction" to LIN Xiaochu, published by Hebei Fine Arts Publishing House in May 2011）

作者：JIN Shangyi