Case 001

the case files of new york art detective

Walter Lin P.I.

PHOTo: Colour selecting and markmaking 1 (Acrylic on board)

Fences and Helmets

There’s something about tallies. Neat little groups of five—simple, predictable. But mine? They total six. Not by accident, mind you. It’s deliberate. A nod to things not adding up, to divergence, to the cracks in the surface where light sneaks through. And yeah, I know I just said I wouldn’t bore you with it. Turns out, I lied.

This painting pulls from two places. The first? A racing helmet. Graham Hill’s, to be exact. You know the one—crisp, clean, unmistakable. His son Damon carried the torch, and with it, that same iconic design. The second influence hits closer to home. Picket fencing, the kind I knocked together from pallets back in the Lot region of France. Two worlds, blending into one image. Fences and helmets. Barriers and speed. Safety and risk. It all adds up to six. Or does it?

PHOTO: BLACK AND WHITE IMAGE OF MY FACE WITH GRID LINES AND IDRAWHEADS silhouette

Layers of a Print

There’s something hypnotic about breaking down an image. Splitting it into pieces, layers, composites. Cyan, magenta, yellow, black. CMYK—the backbone of print, stripped to its essentials. Each layer converted to bitmap—black dots where grayscale used to be. A stark kind of simplicity. I stacked those layers, one on top of the other, like building something out of shadows.

The result? Moody. Pleasingly so. Enough that, for a moment, I considered taking it further. A large format silkscreen print—a statement in ink and scale. But priorities have a way of shifting, and there was another project calling my name. I shelved it. Like so many others, it sits there now—unfinished, unresolved, waiting. Some projects find their way back into the light years later. Some don’t.

Photo: formula 1 racing legend graham hill

Racing Lines

My dad had a hero—Graham Hill. Formula 1 champion, British icon. He raced with a helmet that became a legend all its own. Dark navy, white oar motifs—borrowed from the Oxford University Rowing Club. Simple. Striking. Unforgettable.

Years later, I look at a black-and-white image of myself, and I see something familiar. It’s not Graham, but his son Damon. Another F1 world champion, carrying the legacy, the speed, the weight of history. Maybe it’s the angles. Maybe it’s the shadows. Maybe it’s nothing. But it’s there, a connection that runs deeper than racing lines.