Meet Regina Linke

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Regina Linke a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Regina, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

For most of my life, I felt that purpose was difficult to pin down, because I purpose with meaning. I found lots of things that I did meaningful. I enjoyed and excelled at many things, and I could find value in the things I did, whether for work or for leisure. It wasn’t until I began talking more with a friend, Amit Pagedar, that I learned to position purpose in a different way. The way he explains it is that purpose is where passion meets personal responsibility. I could be passionate about lots of things, like exploring new places, making music, or dancing, but I wouldn’t say that I ever felt a personal responsibility to do those things. They were done out of joy certainly, but I never felt I had a duty to fulfill it. It took several years of simply trying other things that I was passionate about and exploring these activities to see where they led. I started painting and drawing. I started writing stories. Little by little, with increasing depth of engagement with each of these crafts, my personal responsibility to writing stories that I was responsible for telling, and illustrating in a tradition that I was responsible for bridging — East to West, between ancient painting styles and digital technology — I found that creating books combining ancient brush painting and East Asian philosophy for modern children to be my purpose.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I’m a Taiwanese American author and illustrator specializing in contemporary Chinese gongbi-style painting, an ancient form of brush painting that depicts narrative subjects in colorful high detail. Using traditional ink and wash techniques in digital painting, my illustrations deliver classic subjects through a modern lens. My most notable creations are the characters from “The Oxherd Boy,” a single-panel, webcomic that started on Instagram. A young boy, his family ox, and a rabbit living in his garden convey the three core schools of Classical Chinese thought: Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. The best-selling collection of these inspirational pieces called “THE OXHERD BOY: Parables of Love, Compassion, and Community” released in 2024, and was followed in 2025 by its first original story for children called “Big Enough.” A second picture book, Little Helper expanding on this world is slated for release in Summer 2026.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Three qualities that I leaned on the most were: discipline, humility, and equanimity. (1) Discipline: When learning a craft, especially an ancient one like traditional Chinese painting, there’s no way to cheat or hack your way out of consistent, constant practice and attention to detail. Sometimes this means filling pages with just straight, horizontal lines as an exercise. Sometimes it means spending weeks copying a piece from the ancient canon of masterpieces instead of creating your own work. To make a habit of practicing the skills and technique is essential to creating the work I do. (2) Humility: I accept that I’m a beginner in most everything in the process and I have a lot to learn. This is the only way I could get better. To learn anything means accepting that you don’t know something. This is a Taoist teaching that made its way into Zen Buddhism, to become anything you have to be nothing first, and that’s a good thing. (3) Equanimity: To create art in society, and moreso to make a profession of it means things will happen that don’t go your way. I have had to compromise on the stories I tell and take direction on the art that I create in order to make my books. It’s a balance of expressing an artistic voice and compromising with what the world is willing to see, and for every person, the tipping point will be different. To maintain one’s sense of composure and evenness of mind and spirit has been helpful in allowing me to weather through the evolution of my work.

Alright so to wrap up, who deserves credit for helping you overcome challenges or build some of the essential skills you’ve needed?

My painting teacher in Taiwan has been the greatest influence in developing the three essential skills I referred to. Not only did he guide me in the technique of ancient Chinese painting, but also in what the exercise of painting represented. Chinese painting is very much tied with the philosophy, poetry, symbolism, and mysticism. The creation of the work, the work itself, and the contemplation of the work are all imbued with philosophical elements of balance, harmony, and meaning. In teaching me the skills, I learned to be more disciplined, to accept my ignorance in many things and be willing to learn, and to practice equanimity. My teacher at one point said that I would never be a great Chinese painter, which on the surface sounds discouraging and harsh, but he turned out to be right. I would never be one, because I didn’t have the discipline or willingness to suffer so much to master the art form. I also grew up in the U.S., and as an American, I would find it really hard to fully grasp the philosophy behind the tradition. But, I could take what I had learned and combine it with my Western point of view and forge a new path for myself, which is what I learned to do.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://oxherdboy.org/
• Instagram: @oxherdboy