I thought I wanted to share a little story behind this “JOURNEY” Exhibition how I was inspired.
This was at the end of searching how to find or make myself happy but bottom line was there were so many things that I needed to process mentally and forgive things that I wouldn’t have been able to forgive to find my true happiness.
What is life? How can I be happy? What makes me happy?
Over 10 years, painting wasn’t fun, feeling stressed thinking too much of being judged by others… what if everyone doesn’t like my art… what if I was criticised for bad paintings… Why? It was so much fun when I was a little child, I was so free to make art without any fear.
Since I moved back to Perth I took different path, tried photography, creating ceramics etc. I found myself really enjoying making my hands dirty and creating out of clay. The process I enjoyed was the making ceramics within a very short timeframe, that became my challenge of decision making and ideas came very spontaneously. Every process of ceramic making had a surprise end. You’ll never known what you end up until it comes out from the kiln, always had risks of bursting, cracking, glazing didn’t come out the right colour, you name it. But even with those surprises, I really enjoyed every steps and also learnt to let go of the work and start again without emotional attachment.
When lovely Japanese friend couple who kindly offered to participate pottery market at their Japanese restaurant (Kiri Japanese – beautiful authentic Japanese restaurant in Shenton Park) I was so happy to let go of those ceramics as I purely enjoyed the process of making them but had no attachment of bowls, cups, plates, whatever I produced. Looking at the customers who just loved those pieces to purchase, I was almost bursting to tears as 5 years worth of ceramic works I’ve done were almost sold out and they are so loved!! I was very happy to see them going for a good home to be used and looked after.
From this beautiful experience, I leaned that what is really important for art making to me is to focus and enjoy fully on art making, which will clearly show on the final pieces.
This little story helped me to understand how I enjoyed the moment I had with my grandmother who was suffered from dementia. I witnessed her struggle, frustration but also learned not to correct her, learned to be more patient and laugh harder with her and leaned to accept whole of her as is without judgement. I believe, we can all make our lives beautiful if you make it that way.
I hope you’ll enjoy this story to understand my work for this exhibition. As you titles of those painting were related to my grandmother Yoshi who often asked me or relating to her. This is to tribute the cycle of her life and acknowledge her who suffered but enjoyed her life with dementia. Yoshi departed in July 2020 at the age of 84.