Lin-Lin Mao Mollitor: Eye, I
April 2 - May 2, 2026
First Thursday Art Walk - Thursday, April 2nd, 5-8pm
Meet the Artist - Saturdays April 4th through May 2nd, 12-5pm
Inviting sonder, oil portraits of Chinese zodiac animals’ eyes reflect conscious awareness exists in all creatures.
Behind every eye is a conscious life looking back. This exhibition explores consciousness through the eyes of the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac. The zodiac animals—figures that often exist in cultural symbolism, mythology, and celebration—are presented here not as icons but as individuals. Each gaze suggests a consciousness behind it, a perspective on the world that exists independently of our own.
In 2018, the artist experienced a realization while drawing the zodiac animals in colored pencil. While working on her fourth drawing, the snake, she noticed something unexpected: rendering the eye of each animal felt strikingly similar to drawing a human eye—an orb, reflective and alive with light. In that moment, the eye became more than a technical detail. It revealed a shared quality among living beings: awareness. The glossy surface, the reflection of the surrounding world, and the sense of presence within the pupil suggested an inner life looking back. Overcome by a feeling of sonder—the awareness that every being encountered possesses a life as vivid and complex as one’s own—the artist could no longer eat creatures with eyes, knowing them to be sentient, and became vegetarian.
From that realization grew this body of work: an examination, through painting, of the eyes of the Chinese zodiac animals. For the artist, drawing and painting are acts of inquiry. Through close observation, the process becomes a way of thinking—of learning about a subject through sustained attention. Focusing on the eye, often described as the “window to the soul,” the artist attempts to capture something of each animal’s self-awareness and presence.
Additional mixed-media works in the exhibition show landscapes partially obscured by chain-link fencing. These pieces shift the viewer’s attention from the animals’ gaze to the conditions under which many animals live. The fence symbolizes captivity and confinement, standing in tension with the awareness conveyed through the eyes. While the eyes invite empathy and recognition of shared consciousness, the barrier reminds us of the systems humans use to control other living beings.
This exhibition invites viewers to pause and reflect on perception, empathy, and coexistence. In meeting the gaze of the zodiac animals, the viewer encounters a moment of recognition: every eye belongs to a conscious life looking back. When we move beyond the objectifying habit of othering and begin to see ourselves reflected in other beings, we open the possibility for a more compassionate relationship with life on Earth—including with one another.