Between Landscapes. Acrylic on Canvas. 40 x 30 in.

I often struggle to put into words why I paint. Writing about someone else's art feels so much easier; there’s no incessant personal critic censoring words before they even reach the page. Yet wrestling with words is the only way to clarify one’s thoughts. This post is my attempt to do just that—it is a reflection on the artworks I've created over the past five years.

One of the reasons art has been an important part of my life is its ability to capture the fundamental truths, energies, or essences that endure in this world. We live in such a fast-paced urban existence, constantly bombarded by trends, fads, and the next big thing. All these come and go, leaving us yearning for something more substantial. Our soul knows there's something lasting, something eternal, and it constantly yearns for it.

This yearning also understands that the tangible is a counterpart of the unseen. Only when both the physical world and metaphysical world are experienced are we living life to its fullest.

Creative acts, such as painting, fulfil that yearning of our soul. In the act of creation, we transfer the intangible memory, experience, thought, emotion, sensation into a physical brushstroke.

Conversely, the painted image then speaks back, and the physical is transferred into thought and sensation, it provokes new emotions and unlocks forgotten memories. It's a continuous, transformative dialogue.

I’ve always been drawn to the works of Chinese and Japanese artists because they often seek the enduring essence of things within the material world, rather than just replicating appearances. They appreciate a painting most for its ability to capture the spirit of a thing, place or person. In Chen Wen Hsi's works, for example, his gibbons are not just accurate depictions of animals—they capture the playful, curious spirit of these creatures.

The great Japanese haiku master Matsuo Bashō once said:

Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. And in doing so, you must leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Otherwise, you impose yourself on the object and do not learn. Your poetry issues of its own accord when you and the object have become one – when you have plunged deep enough into the object to sense something of its hidden life.

These artists spend a lot of time in a place before attempting to paint or write about it. This is because knowing the hidden nature of things requires time. It cannot be hurried and it is not a skill to be practiced. It is an experience to be lived. It requires much patience. But it is also the whole point of art—to experience life fully.

Apart from this, there is another idea about painting that I find equally true: once a painting begins, it should also be allowed to have a life of its own. It's not just a vehicle for my individual expression of life; more than that, it goes beyond my personal intention.

I think this is a universal approach to art-making, where the artist experiences the state of "flow." Some artists call it the subconscious, but I also recognise it as a spiritual state, where the hand is guided by something larger. It makes perfect sense to me to hear artist Makoto Fujimura talk about painting as prayer because painting connects us to a higher power.

I’m sharing above, a painting called Between Landscapes. This painting tries to encapsulate this interplay between the physical and the metaphysical, the temporary appearance and the enduring spirit, my personal expression versus the life of the painting.

If you've ever felt that pull toward something deeper—a moment of stillness or a thought you couldn’t quite name—then perhaps you've stood in that same space between landscapes. Where the physical and spiritual meet and art becomes more than image. Painting is my way of reaching for that connection. It is a reminder that beneath all the noise, something lasting still speaks.