關於張忠晉About Achin

我總是追求最好的。I always go for the best.

張忠晉生於高雄，年輕時北上台北打拼，後來到淡水做生意。他開過 Ella 爵士咖啡館、安迪艾倫咖啡小館，現在經營餐廳黑客茶舖。

1996 年第一家店開張前，付完房租押金，已經沒有錢裝潢。他拿起畫筆，用油漆把店裡的牆一面一面畫滿，這是他畫畫的開始。他沒念過美術學校，但從小愛塗鴉，學生時代曾在教室牆上畫滿畢卡索的《格爾尼卡》，開店後也一再臨摹畢卡索。

後來，一位天天來喝咖啡的客人「淦哥」，原來是一位畫家。他要張忠晉先畫素描、訓練眼睛，缺什麼零件就去補齊。2005 年，張忠晉決定以繪畫作為一生的目標；2008 年，他完成第一張真正屬於自己的作品：淦哥的畫像。現在他以油畫為主。

Achin was born in Kaohsiung and moved north to Taipei as a young man to make his way. Later he settled in Tamsui and went into business. He has run Ella jazz café and Andy Ellen i café, and today he runs the restaurant Hacha.

In 1996, after paying the rent and deposit on his first café, he had nothing left for the fit-out. So he picked up a brush and painted the walls himself, one by one, with house paint. That is how he began. He never went to art school, but he had drawn since childhood. As a student he once covered a classroom wall with Picasso's Guernica, and for years he copied Picasso to decorate his cafés.

Then a customer who came for coffee every day, Brother Kan (淦哥), turned out to be a painter. He told Achin to draw from life, train his eye, and find the parts he was missing. In 2005 Achin decided to make painting his life's work. In 2008 he finished his first truly original painting: a portrait of Brother Kan. Today he paints mostly in oil.

對張忠晉來說，畫畫像起乩。先有一份心情，放進空白的畫面，讓畫裡的角色自己對話，直到它們安靜下來、找到平衡，畫就完成了。

他的創作走過幾個階段。起初畫自己和家人，把人體簡化成幾何形狀；接著把咖啡館裡的燈泡、插頭、桌椅擬人化，讓它們在畫裡講故事；後來把人體當成書法的一筆一劃，也當成積木的零件，拼出怪獸、花鳥與山水。

他向心中最好的畫家學習，米羅、畢卡索、康丁斯基都在其中。他說，台灣味不只一種，他這個時代的台灣是融合。

For Achin, painting is close to a trance. He starts with a mood, places it on the blank canvas, and lets the figures talk to each other until they fall quiet and find their balance. Then the painting is done.

His work has moved through stages. First he painted himself and his family, with bodies reduced to simple geometric shapes. Then he brought the café's objects to life, the bulbs, plugs, tables and chairs, and let them tell stories. Later he began to use the human body like a stroke of Chinese calligraphy, and like a building block, piecing together monsters, flowers, birds and landscapes.

He learns from the painters he thinks are the best, Miró, Picasso and Kandinsky among them. Taiwanese style, he says, is not just one thing: the Taiwan of his time is a fusion.