Artist Statement

Co-created with the cosmos.

My work is a dialogue with wood grain. I paint what I see within it. Wood grain is a trace inscribed over long years by “a living plant” and “the cosmic order”: sunlight, the earth’s rotation, gravity, the turning of the seasons. It feels to me like a physical record of cosmic rhythm. And so I think of this practice as an act of integrating the individual self into the whole that is the cosmos.

As the support, I work primarily with reclaimed wood gathered from the streets. A form like no other, its cracks, its scars. Within each piece lies a history shared with someone unknown. I pick up what has been discarded, wash it, and bring it back to life as art. In the dark, the work glows quietly.

This practice resonates with the Law of Dependent Origination, as taught by Shakyamuni: the understanding that all things exist through mutual dependence. It also echoes wabi-sabi, ichigo-ichie, and Ko-Shinto — things alive within me that I rediscovered as I left my homeland, traveled the world, and made a life abroad.

Humanity and the cosmos. The individual and the whole. All of it, one.