I heard there's a big whale in the harbor

作品賞析

Artist Lin Huan-chia developed the creative concept of “alienated landscape” by combining childhood memories with real scenes of the present. In this work, he used the port city of Keelung as a model, and the huge whale that suddenly appears in the city is a metaphor for the incompatibility of people from southern Taiwan who went for jobs in the north, as if they are living in a foreign land. The realistic urban architecture and unexpected appearance of the whale presents a scene juxtaposing the real and the fantastic, while implicitly expressing the impact of urban modernization on the environment. In search of more saturated color, Lin Huan-chia, who was originally good at watercolors, began to study acrylic paints and developed an “acrylic transparent technique” that combines the lightness of watercolors and the color saturation of acrylics. The misty brightness exuding from the painting comes from colors that he specially mixed with a gold color pigment. This creates the image of a scene under strong sunlight and enhances the fantastical atmosphere throughout the composition.