Meet Sophie (Liang Yun) Lin | Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Sophie (Liang Yun) Lin and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Sophie (Liang Yun), why did you decide to pursue a creative path?
I think it just naturally came within me. My father was a brilliant writer and my mom was a designer, I grew up surrounded by art, literature and loving supportive environment. There are art pieces and books everywhere in our house. My father loved to take us on hiking or get closer to nature when we were free from school — we’d picked a place to sit after a long hike, usually on a giant rock or just underneath the trees, and started creating together. He’d give us a subject like “Above the clouds”, “Running water”, “The sound of wind”… and we could create in any form — painting or drawing, essay or poem; and there’s no right answer to each topics. We would talk about each other’s work until the sunset gradually enveloped the sky and heading back home with more thoughts in mind. I think that activity ignited my curiosity towards everything, especially storytelling in many different ways.
I decided to be an artist at the age of nine, one day I was very upset (silly enough, because I dropped my favorite ice cream on the floor), I hid in my father’s studio to avoid talking to anyone in the house. There was a set of color pencils and sketchbook on his desk, the afternoon light from the window made them look as if they were glowing. I picked them up and started drawing, couple hours went like a second, when I finished the drawing and looked up to the window — all the leaves from the outside were glittering. My mood suddenly became so much lighter, I felt so happy, like the creating process healed me. I ran downstairs and told my parents I want to be an artist — if my creation had the power to heal myself, maybe one day people can be healed by my art too.
My parents and lots of their artist friends are my role models, since they are mostly very impactful and successful, I never doubt pursuing art as a career is a wrong decision to make in life.

I’m now a freelance makeup artist, illustrator, fabric painter and costume designer. I do a little bit of everything. Including sculpting, photography, and jewelry making outside of my profession. I think art itself is like a house with different windows. The artist own the house, all the windows are just different platforms for the storytelling but they all lead you to the artist mind and their imagination.
Most of my paintings and writings are inspired by my dreams, I dream about three to fifteen dreams every night and I’ve been recording them since I was fourteen. I would be different people with different genders, different ages, different nationalities, different professions, and with completely different personalities in each dream. They were usually all complete stories. I’d live in each person’s life for days, months or even years. I could be a writer in 1979 Germany, a vet in late 90s England, or a photographer living in early 2000 Japan with a whole different lifestyle and historical backgrounds. Sometimes I’d do research after waking up, and oddly enough the architectures, transportation systems, costumes would be matching with the history. And some dreams are just surreal.
When people ask me how to seek for inspirations, I always find it difficult to answer — I don’t seek for them, they come to me, they found me as a vehicle to tell the story, they chose me.
For me it is hard to not pursue a creative career, I just cannot imagine living a life to let all the art in me withered without sharing them    

Please tell us more about your work. We’d love to hear what sets you apart from others, what you are most proud of or excited about. How did you get to where you are today professionally. Was it easy? If not, how did you overcome the challenges? What are the lessons you’ve learned along the way. What do you want the world to know about you or your brand and story?
I was working as a freelance makeup artist, illustrator, painter and writer when I was back home in Taiwan outside of school. Now I mainly working in the theatre art world– from Operas to Broadway shows. I think the most exciting part of my creating process is knowing how to use various media so I’d never get bored of most of the jobs I get. I could be doing hair & makeup for few months, distressing/dyeing fabric for a short while, and simply painting or doing some photography from time to time. When I was applying college, my art teachers told me to try to get into theatre since it contains everything I love – storytelling, art, costumes, makeup & hair, music and many more. Before then, I never thought of being in the theatre world. I grew up watching shows with my parents yet only after getting older I started to appreciate the beauty of theatre — it’s such a powerful form of storytelling and the audience get to share the same massive emotions together just in one space.
The beginning of my journey all started from a small production I saw at Taipei National University of Arts in 2016 – It started with a minstrel singing beautiful lyrics, and he sang whenever the scenes were changing. It was set in a small village in Sudetenland, talking about how the capitalism affect humanity and tradition in different families there. The play portrayed all the details so well, I was completely stunned by it. The ending scene was a helicopter landing on the grass field, all the villagers looked up, facing it. The shadow gradually covered their faces, and the theater was surrounded by the echo of the helicopter. It planted a seed in my heart in that moment — I wish to myself I want to participate in a production like this, to make more people falling in love with theatre like I did. I walked out of the theatre and it was raining, as if the sky was tearing up along with the audience after the show. An old man handed me an umbrella and vanished in the woods – I thought it was a calling, an invitation to the theatre community.

I decided to study abroad after graduated from high school, my parents were very supportive, they just told me I need to get scholarship to support myself, which I did. I spent a whole year traveling and studying English, then went to SUNY Purchase College for Costume Design in Theatre Design/Technology.
Met many incredible mentors and professors there, and they got me to where I am today, very grateful. I’ve been constantly working ever since I graduated and learned so much along the way.

It is certainly not easy no matter what profession you chose. You just need to remind yourself why you chose it in the first place. I’ve learned that being calm is the most important thing one can do in any given difficult situation — it helps you to perceive everything clearer and solve the problem faster.
I meditate on daily basis, and I’m glad I started doing this from a young age. Whenever challenges come to me I’d take a deep breath and tell myself the only thing I can do is to do my best on my part, being peaceful always simplify everything. Always be kind, passionate and respectful. If other people can’t see the way you are, let it go — you cannot control how people think and feel about you.

Working with people is the biggest challenge for me in the theatre world. People can be so different from one another — different values, thoughts, and beliefs. Most of the people think they’re right in every aspect, unwilling to take in new information or be more accepting. To me, that is just having limitation for oneself. As an introverted artist it was very hard to adjust in the first place when I stepped into the theatre world, I’m so used to being alone and creating alone. In theatre, everyone has so much to say and so certain about what they believe in. However, it’s also the beauty of theatre! Sharing thoughts, creativities, feelings, stories together can be so inspiring and fascinating. I think just being more openminded people can learn so much more from each other.
Now I love both working with people and my own solitude. I found a perfect balance between work and life, I’d use my personal time to go to museums, hiking, cooking by myself to recharge enable to create greater things once I start to work with people again.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is definitely the place I’d love to take any best friend to. I go there whenever I have free time and would stay for the entire day — you find something new every single time you visit there! Not only the art work, it is perfect for people watching too. They have some of the best painting and photography exhibits beside the historical work. I’d always bring a sketchbook with me just to sit there and draw some of my favorite sculptures and the interesting people passing by. It is like a live theatre, you get to see many people from all over the world to appreciate the art pieces from all over the world. I love bringing people to Central Park as well, it is the same as The Met, every time you go there you’d find a new spot to enjoy the nature. The last time I went there I found a small waterfall that I never seen in the past years! Just walking there with a camera is one of the biggest joy one could have. For food — there are many incredible Italian, Japanese and Indian restaurants in the city. But I only go there on special occasion. I cook a lot, so one of my favorite things to do is to take my friends to the near by market, grocery stores and create new recipe for them to taste, There are many great places in Astoria (where I live now) sell fresh ingredients and I’d just visit to get the ingredients I never tried before, ask the local person the best way to cook them, and cook for the people I love. There’re also many amazing jazz bars in Brooklyn I’d take people to visit, live music is simply so fascinating.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I would love to shoutout to my father who passed away in January 2019. He was and still is the light on my creative path. He’s an incredible writer who left hundreds of books and influenced hundreds of thousands of people around the world with his words. Whenever I felt lost in life, I would find answers in his book still, it makes me feel like I could still talk to him and connect to him.

My father always said constantly creating is a training to connect your mind, heart, and hand altogether. Once you connected all of them, it makes everything easier in life — to live with consciousness and appreciating everything more. Until today, I still carry a notebook with me wherever I go to record the surroundings or simply a thought or an idea. Then as time goes by, those stories won’t be washed away by other memories. He always reminded me how difficult it was for people to travel back in the days, even buying a ticket to another city. No matter how hard it was, he still longed for travel, so he let literature became his wings.
One of my favorite things he said was “You have to carry home with you to the world, and bring the world back to home. Art is your wings to lead you to wherever you need to go. You have the talent and love, they are your greatest asset that nobody can take away from you.”

I remember the first year he passed away he came to visit in my dream. I was in his favorite coffee shop and he sat down in front of me, asking me how’s my creating life been. I couldn’t hold my tears, “I can’t create anything because of you! Every time I write or paint something, I thought of you and my tears would cover the paper and ruin the whole thing.”, I said.
He was laughing so hard and gently wiping my tears, “Oh sweetheart, I’m sorry. It’s okay if you can’t create anything! It’s time for you to absorb. Whenever you feel stuck in the process, read more, go for a long walk, go to museums and places you like or learning new things. You don’t always have to be creating, you should find rooms for other things to come to you, and one day you’d be able to create greater things unwittingly.” “But you promised me we will publish a book together, what if one day I publish my own book and I only want you to write my introduction?” I asked. He pulled out a book that he wrote when he was in my age, and flipped to page 19, “Here, I think this paragraph suits your state of mind, you’re welcome to use this as the introduction since I can’t be there with you when you publish your first book.” He hugged me, and I woke up.
My parents always put books they want me to read and some teas they want me to try in my suitcase before I travel. That night, I went to my suitcase and found out that book was in there. The book was so old, when I opened it some of the pages even fill out, but I soon found the paragraph he gifted me. I thought about that dream a lot, it was quite a magical experience.

It is also why I think people should not stop creating, you never know when would people find your work in the moment they needed the most. For me, impermanence is the last lesson my father taught me. I’ve learned that most of the things in life are like four seasons, nothing will last forever, but the spring and the blossoms will always come back in a different form. I know I can find him in his book whenever I miss him, and his readers can do the same. My father not only lived for sixty-five years, his articles are his life too — they could last for another sixty years, six hundred years, or even longer. His literature surpass the time and space, whenever people need him, they can always meet him in his books.

I hope to myself to do the same, using the most sincere emotions to create from the bottom of my heart, sharing all my creation with the world as parts of me, so that people can always find me in my creation.

Website: sophielinart.com

Instagram: lianggg_bao

Linkedin: Sophie Lin