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ARTIST STATEMENT
2006
I was struck by a beautiful ceramic vase my father cherished in my mother’s home in China when I went to visit her last year. . He passed away 15 years ago. As I was staring at the vase, memories of my father floated around me. And the questions came up: How can a cheap vase outlive my father? Is this vase so worthy? Can, what we call as precious life, be this short? Where is my father who is so dear to me?!
In this work, I use various objects found in daily life to glue on the canvas of a human shadow to show the contrast between the living and non-living, temporary and everlasting; the light and dark; finite and infinite, current and past. It is a emblematic way of showing the ephemeral aspect of our life --- the fragile human form. Yet there is light, the universal light which penetrates everything is the eternal form within the human being.
The inspiration of this work came from an incident when I visited my Mom in China.. I was struck by a beautiful ceramic vase my father cherished. He passed away 15 years ago. As I was staring at the vase, memories of my father floated around me. He used to explain to us that the vase was a unusual find in an obscure corner in a little shop; the surface design is abstract, yet it make you imagine of life brewing at the bottom and streaming up to the opening; farther more things looked like almost immersing out. In another word, the whole thing is teeming with life.
Yet 15 years later, my father is no longer there, but the vase is here to stay. This phenomenon brings me to a realty check: What is real and what is not? Am I real? I know I am real now because you could see and touch me. I could say that I am an artist, an Asian, an immigrant, a mother, and a daughter and so on and so forth. But how about 100 years later, when the paintings are still there yet I am long gone? Who am I at that time?
This leads me to think about dimensions, we are definitely not permanent at 2 or 3 dimensional world, but maybe, at 5th or 7th dimension we are eternal. This is hopeful and inspiring. I might be the person who are, say LEI 10279 forever and I am there living and that is I am.
Looking at the painting, I choose intentionally at things which will sure outlive me, and I fill them in my image space. I want to bring out feelings and the awareness to the viewer about our existence and our very being..
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