Mind-bending, Unsettling, Cheeky and Cute Illustrations

Alice Lin is an accomplished painter based out of Beijing, China. In her work as a painter and as a freelance artist, Lin draws inspiration from traditional sources as well as more fantastic sources, the “fascinating wonderland,” as she puts it, “of possible realities combine[d] with the human figure, plants, animals into a singular, calm, dark vision.” A recent series, A Moony Night, posted on Behance, shows Lin bringing her mission statement to wondrous life. The series, produced with traditional Chinese paints on silk, begins with a word from the artist. Here she describes the meaning of moony night for her as being “about empowerment in a soothing way.” The series, for Lin, is an attempt to give the viewer a sense of that empowerment. She achieves this through this wild cross section between Salvador Dali and Alice in Wonderland, as though Dali came along and produced a series inspired by Alice’s adventures. It’s a strange alchemy that creates precisely the sense of “calm, dark vision,” that Lin professes to be after. The series follows an adorable rabbit, placid in the face of bizarre, increasingly dark surroundings and pooling waters, melting daisies, chopped off heads of flowers, a potentially murderous flamingo and the absence of its body as its own eyes warp into Daliesque puddles in its dismembered head. And all of them are rendered in through traditional means. The overall effect is mind-bending, unsettling, cheeky and cute. All at the same time.