Dispersing 3

Artist's Note
One day I was crossing the river on the subway. Because I was leaning beside the window I could feel, vividly, the living scene that opened beyond the glass. Was it the color the evening was scattering, or did the sun's strength make me decide it was around that hour — it is harder than you would think to remember exactly when in the day. Rather, the moment itself comes back to me without warning, and even now I sense that hour the way I sensed it then. A single color, in many expressions, settling on a wave that trembled at the far end of the sky — that made me feel, alongside myself watching it, every living thing breathing at the same time. I want to say it was because I saw that these dazzling, scattering things were connected to all of us, myself included. Each time I meet an unfamiliar moment I grow used to it as if I had known it already. The lines I draw with a flick or a long sweep of the body run across the canvas, across the paper. And in that moment they prove, absolutely and entirely, that things are "here." My truest self can become clear within those drawn lines and the layers stacking on them. The "I"s engraved at each moment, naturally, pass beyond me and bring others to mind. And so my work, unfolded as action, breathes out admiration toward all who breathe alongside me, and lets me dream of connection. My work, expressed in color and line, is therefore close to a respect for the other. Therefore also: that they are no different from me.

Lifting one hand, I make a wide sweep through the air, drawing a line. In that moment, it is not difficult to find myself there as I am. Even when the fading of a passed trajectory casts doubt on what once was, the act is not erased; the mark stays. Perhaps this simplest, most direct act, in itself, proves my living and being-here at this moment more fittingly than anything else. I trust that, through the work of drawing lines — the lines that are at once the result of intuition and the bare expression of the inner self — my truest self will be expressed naturally. Through the joining of lines and the experience of their layering, repeated many times, I become more myself, and to face the gathering of the "I"s engraved at each moment and say it is no different from myself can therefore not be called an exaggeration.
I think, sometimes, that being can be revealed more clearly through a way more intuitive than proof through words. That is, paradoxically, in trying to come close to essence, the meaning of being may be more vividly manifested when truthful moments gather, even without my straining to reveal myself. And this, too, can be called a truth realized in the very place that comes before speech, in each of those moments themselves. In the course of working, the experience of facing myself naturally leads me to attend to others' moments as well. Rather than being absorbed only in my own being, by looking inward I cannot help but at the same time think of others living together with me; so that the weight of coexistence is set within my work without difficulty.
My painting is completed by drawing lines on canvas, the surface filling itself patiently. In my imagining, the lines on the surface extend beyond it and connect, and the lines that return settle back onto the canvas; the forms each line makes are not so much made by seeking points already set out by thought, but, I would say, are formed instantly, following an intuitive response. For a long time, in order to make a layer to be newly built up, I would cover the surface filled with lines completely with a color close to the ground color, and continue the process by repeating it. Recently, in addition, I have been covering parts of the surface rather than the whole and laying new lines on top to make layers — based on the thought that the moments revealing being are not meaningful only by occurring and stacking sequentially, but that the being placed within each moment may already, in itself, hold meaning. When the moments are revealed all at once and become visible on the canvas, it becomes natural to recall every being inside them — myself among them — and to wish for connection at the same time. To express myself through this work, articulated as intuitive gestures on the canvas, ultimately reaches a respect toward all the others who exist.