GEORGE TOWN, Jan 26 — Glinting like a jewel on the coast off the Tun Dr Lim Chong Eu Expressway, the newly completed Lin Xiang Xiong Art Gallery is hard to miss especially for those driving along the coastal highway.
The RM100 million turtle-shaped gallery stands eight storey high and is as grand as it appears, with spacious galleries that showcases artworks painted in bold ink and colourful acrylic by Singaporean artist Professor Lin Xiang Xiong.
The businessman, who founded CNMC Goldmine Holdings, has been an artist for 60 years and the opening of his private art gallery is the culmination of his dream to showcase art that spread the message of peace.
“My understanding is that, as an artist, it is my job to serve the human society,” Lin said in an interview with Malay Mail recently.
“I don’t want to paint something just to auction it off to make money, this is not my job as an artist,” he added.
A personal art trove
The 80-year-old has not sold off any of his paintings for the past six decades and now, his life’s work of over 1,000 paintings, sketches and hand-written thoughts and rumination are being displayed in his private gallery.
“Everyone is an artist from the day they are born, art is the nature of humans and I believe that artists can serve for the betterment of the human society through their art,” he said.
Lin, who was born in Guangdong, China, recounted a dark period in his life when his mother passed away in 1953 and he moved to the then-Malaya with his grandmother in 1956.
“I went through many hardships at that time, it was a hard life for me growing up,” he said.
He started painting in the 1960s and studied fine arts in Singapore Academy of Arts in 1965 before heading to Paris, France to continue studying fine art in 1971.
Lin said his paintings in the beginning were mostly traditional Chinese style using ink on rice paper before he slowly changed his style to the Nanyang style.
“You will notice I changed my styles over the years, from traditional Chinese paintings to the Nanyang style and from there, my style changed again to incorporate some Western style with acrylic for the colours,” he said.
All about peace
Sometime in the late 1990s, Lin started to use his paintings to spread the message on the importance of peace and to call for a stop on wars and conflicts.
He said as an artist and a writer, he does not have the power to change the world but he can use his creations to highlight the atrocities of wars and conflicts in order to influence the people in power to work towards peace.
“The politicians are the ones making policies so as an artist, I want to show them what is happening in the society that they can change since the power lays in their hands,” he said.
From his early works depicting plants and flowers to everyday life such as peaceful kampung scenes, busy fishing villages to rambutans and durians, Lin started painting horrifying war scenes of skeletons strewn on the ground with explosions in the background, people hiding in tents as red plumes of explosions unfurled in the skies, people carrying all their belongings and running away as buildings crumbled behind them and rivers of blood and bones as soldiers advanced in tanks.
He painted scenes of suffering and pain from the conflicts in various parts of the world from the Rohingya conflict to the Gaza conflict, accompanying each work with a poem extrapolating on the scars left by wars and human greed for power.
“I only have one theme for my paintings, it is to use art for peace,” he said.
Finding common ground
Lin has also organised dialogue sessions and art forums in several different countries to talk about his one single passion - using art to call for peace.
He held an art exhibition titled “Art for Peace” to call for a dialogue on the arts between the east and he went in UNESCO headquarters in Paris, France back in 2016.
He organised an anti-war themed exhibition titled “Opposing War, Advocating Peace - The Artistic Mission of Lin Xiang Xiong” on the site of the gallery while it was still under construction in 2024.
Most recently, he organised an anti-war, anti-pollution and anti-poverty themed exhibition titled “The Vicissitudes of Life” in Hõtel de I’Industie in Paris, France in 2025.
“I was awarded the gold medal of honour by the Ligue Universelle du Bien Public on June 6 in 2025 in recognition of my advocacy of peace,” he said.
He said this proved that he is on the right path in his fight to spread the message of peace through his art and dialogue sessions.
The Lin Xiang Xiong Gallery is now open to public where his artworks are showcased under four major themes - the story of Xiang Xiong, the story of Nanyang, the Vicissitudes of life and the story of nature - in the third to sixth floors of the gallery.
The seventh floor is to showcase the gallery’s East Meets West Art Special Exhibition while the second floor is an education centre for art education and youth development.
For information on the gallery, go to lxxartgallery.com
