Work Series Introduction
This series consists of three parts: two paintings titled Portrait of a moonlit night, a collection of 17 small pieces titled The Field That Breathes, and one large-scale work titled That good night.
This body of work unfolds across three stages—beginning with small-scale experiments, moving into a meditative series, and culminating in a large-scale painting. The progression is both visual and emotional, exploring intimacy, longing, distance, and resilience through the language of landscape and abstraction.
Portrait of a moonlit night I,2025, Oil on wood,30x20cm
Portrait of a moonlit night II,2025, Oil on canvas,40x30cm
1.“Portrait of a Moonlit Night”
Portrait of a moonlit night I,2025, Oil on wood,30x20cm
Portrait of a moonlit night II,2025, Oil on canvas,40x30cm
Dimensions:30 x 40 cm
Medium :Oil on canvas
These two works mark the beginning of the series. Inspired by a journey to Finland in search of
the Northern Lights, I was most moved not by the lights themselves, but by the deep silence that
fell when we turned off the engine and lights. In that moment, the usual pressures of daily life
dissolved.
These paintings reflect the tension between idealism and emotion, between urban pace and natu
ral stillness. Influenced by Caspar David Friedrich, I sought to express a kind of sublime sadness
embedded in nature—one that feels closer to truth.
While loneliness is often feared, I see it as a gateway into the self. Nature’s indifference be
comes a mirror for reflection, solace, and healing
2.“The Field That Breathes”
The Field That Breathes,2025,Oil on wood17 panels, each 10 × 10 cm
This is the central part of the series, created through an intuitive process. Each work functions as a fragment of memory or feeling—a field in the wind, a stone in the dark, an imagined iceberg. I prepare my tools, listen to music, and enter a meditative state, allowing the image to arise without preconception.
I use large brushes and even the end of brush handles to create marks and textures, aiming to let go of conscious control and let the subconscious lead—especially present in this section.
Repetition appears frequently in these works. These repeated strokes are not just formal gestures, but psychological marks. Having trained within China’s rigorous academic system, these repetitive, orderly gestures are deeply embedded in my bodily memory. I see them as reflecting a broader Asian collective unconscious—disciplined, restrained, semi-free, semi-mechanical. The rhythm of control and release shapes my language.
This series is also deeply influenced by Kandinsky and Paul Klee’s theories on the relationship between music and painting. I paint with rhythm, motion, and tone rather than narrative. These are subconscious condensations—emotions that cannot be named, but are always present.
3.“That Good Night”
That good night, 2025, oil on canvas,160x130cm
This large-scale painting functions as a culmination of the series. The title is taken from Dylan Thomas’s poem *Do not go gentle into that good night*, but my intent is not to express rage, but a quieter hope—a quiet resilience in the face of adversity.*
The painting shows a moonlit body of water and grasses moving in the wind. I hope viewers can feel the calm I feel when facing life’s challenges—the gentle comfort of a night breeze.
Reflections on the MA Show:
Finding a Painterly Language Between Medium Specificity and the Digital Age
The Power of Medium Specificity
At the MA show, I noticed that viewers were much more interested in my small paintings, especially the ones with random textures and spontaneous marks. This made me think about what paint and materials really mean. Maybe when I let paint do what it naturally wants to do, without trying to control it too much, it becomes more powerful.
This reminds me of Greenberg's ideas about medium specificity. He believed painting should focus on what makes it unique—the flatness of the canvas and the physical quality of paint. When painting stops telling stories or pretending to be three-dimensional, and just shows paint being paint on a flat surface, it can create the strongest visual and emotional impact. My small works might be powerful exactly because they embrace these medium-specific qualities.
Unclear Emotions and Connection
These small paintings capture quick emotional moments. Their feelings are more intense and direct. This makes me wonder: are people naturally drawn to emotions? The emotions in these paintings aren't clear or specific—they're open to interpretation. This uncertainty gives viewers more room to imagine and project their own feelings. It's like those landscape paintings that show ordinary things but somehow make us feel something deep inside.
Mark Rothko has always influenced me. His simple, flat blocks of color have tremendous power—they feel sublime. His Seagram Murals are especially moving. When I learned he was inspired by church windows, I understood why his work feels so sacred. Rothko showed that painting can reach deep spiritual experiences through the simplest, most purely optical forms.
Flatness: Then and Now
For my large painting "That Good Night" many people asked me what those grass-like shapes were. Some saw grass, others saw a dragon. When I painted it, I was trying to show wind blowing through grass.
I've been thinking about why these shapes look so flat. I think it comes from video games—those flat graphics that look like 3D models or stage sets. Since Manet, painting has been getting flatter. This happened because cities changed how people see. When Paris got the Eiffel Tower, when planes let people see from above, these new ways of seeing changed how artists painted. Greenberg noticed this trend and said flatness was the most important, medium-specific quality of painting.
Today, screens and video games shape how we see. I look at flat computer screens every day, but see 3D worlds inside them. Game layers, flat UI design, 3D rendering—these digital images affect how I paint. The shapes in "That Good Night" that look "like grass but also like dragons" aren't traditional depth, and they're not Greenberg's pure flatness either. They're something in between—flat but layered, suggesting space without pretending to be real 3D.
Maybe this is what artists today have to deal with. Just like artists in the early 1900s responded to cities and machines, we're trying to find a painting language for the digital age. This "layered flatness" might be painting's new way of being honest about how we see—experiencing 3D worlds through 2D screens.
Finding Peace in Game Landscapes
Strangely, the first time I really felt peaceful from looking at a landscape wasn't in real life—it was in a video game.
Two moments stick with me. First, in "The Last of Us," after fighting infected creatures, I finally opened a door to go outside. Sunlight came through plants growing over ruins. Going from dark, spore-filled underground spaces where you need a mask, to suddenly being in bright, open air—that release of tension was unforgettable.
Second, in "Returnal," a game about dying and repeating over and over. After countless deaths and hard battles, when I finally finished, I came to a pure white space. The character sat down. Everything became quiet. After all that chaos, the peace felt almost religious.
These feelings in games are real. When I traveled to Finland and stood in an empty forest, I realized it was the same feeling—peace after escaping noise and stress. This makes me think: in our digital age, we don't really separate "real" from "virtual" emotions anymore. The peace from game landscapes works just as well as peace from real nature. This affects my painting too—those flat, layered shapes might be my way of painting this "digital peace": an emotional landscape that exists between real and virtual.
Being Honest About Technique
I have to admit I'm not experienced with large paintings. When the canvas gets bigger, there's so much more to think about. Regular brushes can't create that spontaneous, medium-specific expression anymore. People suggested using bigger paint buckets or pouring techniques. These might help me keep the spontaneity and material quality of my small paintings when working larger.
Unfortunately, I need a proper workspace for these experiments. For now, I'll keep exploring with small paintings—using them as my lab to understand how materials, emotions, and medium specificity work together. Maybe these limitations will help me find my own painting language—one that respects modernism's focus on flatness and purely optical experience, while also being honest about our digital visual world.
Fieldwork in the Valley of Vision:
Rovaniemi, Finland, January 2025
In January 2025, I traveled to Rovaniemi, Finland, in pursuit of the aurora. This journey became a turning point in my practice—not because I witnessed the northern lights, but because, while walking on a frozen lake, I unexpectedly experienced a profound sense of calm and safety.
The following photographs document visual fragments from this "fieldwork." They are not art photography, but "visual notes" in the phenomenological sense—attempting to capture moments that triggered artistic creation. In these images: moonlight transforms snow into silver canvas, Sami cabins become the only human traces in wilderness, the frozen lake serves as both boundary and passage.
This "felt space," formed by freezing temperatures, silence, and sparse light, evoked memories of my childhood home while stripping away the tension and anxiety connected to it. This experience of "being like home yet not home" led me to understand solitude as a container for emotions rather than an absence. These photographs document the material conditions of this embodied experience.
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