An artist fascinated by mysterious creatures opens portals to other worlds.
Lin Wan-tzu (林宛姿), better known by her pseudonym Chirle P. (查理宛豬), is an avid reader. After she read a Mandarin translation of “Moby-Dick” more than a decade ago, she was not only enthralled by Herman Melville’s epic story of an obsessive captain seeking revenge on a giant white sperm whale, but also inspired to share her enthusiasm with others by creating lively images to draw readers in. Lin illustrated a book titled “A Sublime Journey to the Unknown” that detailed Melville’s background and introduced the classic tale with literary analysis of select chapters. Her illustrations for the chapters “The Whiteness of the Whale,” “The Right Whale’s Head—Contrasted View” and “The Chase—First Day” leap off the page to captivate readers of the book released in 2011 by a Taipei City-based publishing house. Lin’s images of whales have continued to evolve throughout her work since, becoming something of a signature.
Bowl painted for a residential lobby in central Taiwan’s Taichung City (Courtesy of Chirle P.)
The artist was born in 1976 and grew up in the port city of Keelung on the northern tip of Taiwan. When she was a senior high school student, her childhood interest in drawing was stirred again in Eslite, a new and stylish bookshop in downtown Taipei where Lin was thrilled by Western illustrated books. “In contrast to local picture books, these had elaborate and detailed drawings spanning diverse themes and were not necessarily for children,” she recalled. “Being a painter was a distant dream, but a career as an illustrator seemed possible to me.”
Even before Lin graduated from the Department of Commercial Design at Taipei-based Ming Chuan University in the early 2000s, she had started producing work for books in addition to individual commissions such as illustrations she made for Keelung Municipal Cultural Center. Her reputation as an illustrator developed fast, as she searched texts for apt motifs to bring into her visual language. Her work was shown in both solo and mixed exhibitions at home and abroad—including at the 2014 Bologna Children’s Book Fair after the Ministry of Culture (MOC) selected a book featuring her illustration of a master chef and his Taiwan dishes for display at the event’s Taiwan section.
Mural in a hotel in the northern port city of Keelung (Photo by Pang Chia-shan)
Friendly Souls
The same year, the MOC’s Bureau of Cultural Heritage released a book on the Keelung Ghost Festival—recognized by the MOC in 2008 as part of Taiwan’s intangible cultural heritage—with illustrations by Lin as part of a series of picture books depicting the country’s main folk celebrations. The Ghost Festival is celebrated during the seventh month of the lunar calendar, and practices in Keelung originated in the 1850s as a way to unify residents and ease deadly conflicts between clans by getting them to organize the festivities in turns. The rituals provide a focus to commemorate those who died in wars, clan clashes, accidents and natural disasters. The book’s author Cao Ming-zong (曹銘宗), a novelist and researcher of Keelung’s history, seeks to promote a more friendly and compassionate view of the dead. In a recent comment about this year’s festival, Cao praised Lin for her gentle depictions of ghosts complementing the writer’s ethos. Commissioned to illustrate books, magazines and newspapers, Lin views the process of interacting with authors and editors as a privileged first look at a book. “It’s really enjoyable! I combine my love of reading with realizing the visuals that come to mind as the story unfolds,” she said. The artist credits her university general education courses such as urban science and social studies with providing grist for her inspirational mill. “They’re not directly about drawing or painting, but they helped a lot with looking at the world from different angles,” she said. “In fact, to be an artist, you need to be exposed to diverse experiences.”
“Capsule Whale Twist,” acrylic on canvas, 2022 (Photo by Pang Chia-shan)
Illustrations depicting scenes from “Moby-Dick” in the book “A Sublime Journey to the Unknown” published in 2011 (Courtesy of Chirle P.)
Leviathan Love
With over a decade of pairing text with illustrations under her belt, Lin felt the tug toward solely visual communication to fulfill her early desire to become a painter. “It’s a natural transition I’ve always wanted,” she said. In 2013, she joined an artist-in-residence program at Freedom Men Art Apartments, a privately funded space in central Taiwan’s Taichung City for local and international artists. “I exchanged ideas with artists from Hong Kong and Malaysia speaking Cantonese, English and Mandarin,” she recalled. At the exhibition showcasing the results of the Taichung residency, her favorite cetacean subject swam into full view in her large murals. The marine behemoth is a recurring character, long a theme of her drawings and central to the images she creates. Lin said her whale creations are what she feels most satisfied with. “Through this particular subject, people get to know more about me amid so many artists,” she said. Growing up by the coast has informed her love of the ocean and sky, giving rise to her dreamlike images where whales swim in both watery depths and starry heavens. Lin’s pastel-colored otherworldly visions are now instantly recognizable.
The Taichung mural is not the only wall-turned-to-ocean via Lin’s whales. She received a boost from the trend for officially sanctioned murals, which feature heavily in community rejuvenation efforts and commercial projects across Taiwan. At Humpback Whale House in Taichung, a workshop in a former military dependents’ village, a whale on the wall entices children to stay and look at picture books. A kindergarten in western Taiwan’s Yunlin County is similarly blessed with images of the wise and gentle giants. In Lin’s hometown, a newly opened hotel, formerly the dormitory for the National Museum of Marine Science and Technology, is graced with her murals, as is the museum itself, which features her work around the floor-to-ceiling windows. The artist is also sought after for private commissions, such as a huge bowl created for a residential lobby in Taichung that was painted inside and out in entrancing shades of lilac and blue with mesmeric images of whales traversing what could be the cosmos or the briny deeps.
Lin’s images swim up the walls and around the windows of the National Museum of Marine Science and Technology in Keelung. (Courtesy of Chirle P.)
“I’ve had kind of a love affair with huge, ancient creatures,” Lin said, adding that her next obsession would probably be with dragons, perhaps because like the rarely glimpsed whale, the mythic beast is open to imagination. Viewers will no doubt enjoy following the artist on her journey to spot these beguiling creatures as they appear in her books, on her canvases and on walls around Taiwan.
Write to Pat Gao at cjkao@mofa.gov.tw