So many strokes, so much roughness in this painting and I love it. There's a heaviness almost cruelty in the dark blue and red. Then Napoli yellow and rosy pink, diving into the red, forming swirls. Then green - the color of a lily pond, the color of spring grass. Gentleness and brutality intertwine here, like the seasons.

I have many paintings called Tree. I've spent most of my life moving between cities, even countries - often on my own. I've felt like a stranger in almost every place I've been. There's a constant wish in me to be grounded, to belong somewhere. I long to stand the way a tree stands. To be rooted into the earth the way a tree is.

I have many paintings called Tree. I've spent most of my life moving between cities, even countries - often on my own. I've felt like a stranger in almost every place I've been. There's a constant wish in me to be grounded, to belong somewhere. I long to stand the way a tree stands. To be rooted into the earth the way a tree is. I see trees as a kind of ideal self. They take in rain and sunlight because that's simply what they're meant to do. No one questions why a tree exists - it exists as itself. No two trees are the same, and still, we accept them exactly as they are. I like how physical that rootedness is. You can see the roots cross and knot. You can see the growth rings. You can see how, one particular winter, the cold wind bent the trunk a little toward the south. I painted them very transparent, almost ghostly. The wounds on the branches are shaped like eyes- staring back at you from the canvas.

The night I started this painting, it was just a black canvas with a patch of white in the middle. I had a dream, and a voice in it told me, "that's the eternal seed" - so that became its name. This painting is where I started painting more intuitively, with little to no planning or figurative shape.. There's less planned symbolism or meaning behind the work, instead, I let myself paint and be surprised by what's born out of it.

The painting started with the red lines - a coiled snake. During meditation, the instructor often said, "picture yourself in a safe space." I saw a piece of land floating in the middle of darkness. I sat inside a circle of flame, eyes closed, and a snake wrapped itself up from my feet, resting its head on my shoulder. It didn't bite me, nor was it there to protect me. Not all beings chase, hunt, deceive, suspect, and feed off each other. We breathed in and out together - we co-existed.

This painting starts after I cut open a plum in the morning :)

When we were in the womb, it was the only time we were truly connected to another life. After the umbilical cord is cut, that rightful dependence no longer exists, but the longing for it remains. We're expected to stand on our own in the crowd, while still craving love and warmth - so we find communities and friends, lose ourselves in music and parties, chasing dependency and belonging. We are all looking for a second womb. I used pink - a skin-like pink, echoing the vein-like lines running through flower petals, or the fine blood vessels visible beneath nearly-transparent skin. I wanted something delicate, feminine, something that felt like life itself.

Red lines are fate, in Chinese culture. Our lives intertwine. Every encounter, every decision we make extends the line, and eventually it weaves into a web. The web traps us. The web also holds us - keeps us from falling. Some parts get messy, where the lines turn into knots. In Chinese, we call this 心结 (xīn jié) — something you keep holding onto, something you're afraid might happen, a small knot tied onto your heart.

This was a room I curated for my graduation exhibition. My paintings were on the wall, connected by red lines. I printed twelve poems onto canvas and let them scatter around the space - on the floor, on the wall - as if my thoughts, too, were scattered around the room.

These are the first series of abstract works I ever made. The series circles around 镜花水月 - flower in the mirror, moon in the water. An old Chinese way of describing something beautiful, but ungraspable. Something that's there and also isn't. I remember thinking about the moon’s reflection on a river. You look down, and there she is, sitting on the water. You're moved by her, genuinely moved - the way you'd be moved by the moon itself. But she's not the moon, a breath of wind could break her into pieces. Does that make her less real? I tore paper into loose, unplanned shapes and glued them onto wood panels. There's a lot of water in these paintings: water moving, water dripping down in closed spaces.

These are the first series of abstract works I ever made. The series circles around 镜花水月 - flower in the mirror, moon in the water. An old Chinese way of describing something beautiful, but ungraspable. Something that's there and also isn't. I remember thinking about the moon’s reflection on a river. You look down, and there she is, sitting on the water. You're moved by her, genuinely moved - the way you'd be moved by the moon itself. But she's not the moon, a breath of wind could break her into pieces. Does that make her less real? I tore paper into loose, unplanned shapes and glued them onto wood panels. There's a lot of water in these paintings: water moving, water dripping down in closed spaces.

These are the first series of abstract works I ever made. The series circles around 镜花水月 - flower in the mirror, moon in the water. An old Chinese way of describing something beautiful, but ungraspable. Something that's there and also isn't. I remember thinking about the moon’s reflection on a river. You look down, and there she is, sitting on the water. You're moved by her, genuinely moved - the way you'd be moved by the moon itself. But she's not the moon, a breath of wind could break her into pieces. Does that make her less real? I tore paper into loose, unplanned shapes and glued them onto wood panels. There's a lot of water in these paintings: water moving, water dripping down in closed spaces.