Linling Lu: Musical Meditations

Linling Lu: Musical Meditations is an exhibition of recent and new works that continues the artist’s investigations and responses to sound and color.  Inspired by various musical genres, such as Johann Sebastian Bach’s cello suites and Japanese Taiko master Eitetsu Hayashi’s drum piece, Fertility of the Sea, Lu channels these musical encounters, creating circular compositions that become physical manifestations of the music playing in her studio. This unique presentation of Lu’s paintings can be considered individually, or in their entirety. Lu aims to fashion a space for viewers to explore while they imagine and consider their own physical and emotional responses to her works. At times the artist uses a  monochromatic color palette, at others the artist’s palette is a sharp contrast of seemingly discordant colors. Combined with these varying color palettes, Lu’s use of the circular pictorial plane visualizes the resonant tones of varying musical influences, while also alluding to the cyclical nature of life, the multiplicity of humanity’s place in the universe. The artist’s paintings of varying sizes undulate and ripple with color, evoking their own vibrant score, encouraging reflection about sound, color, our bodies, and our very existence within the cosmos. Lu’s colorful compositions ask viewers to consider and listen closely to themselves in order to find the score that lies within us all. 

Linling Lu was born in 1983 in Guizhou (goo-zau) Province, China. In 2005 she received a bachelor’s degree in Landscape Architecture from Beijing Forestry University. Lu came to the United States in 2006 to attend Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Baltimore, MD, received a BFA in painting in 2008 and an MFA from the Hoffberger School of Painting, MICA in 2011. Her work is included in private and public collections nationally and internationally and the permanent collection of the US Embassy in Beijing. The artist is represented by HEMPHILL Artworks.