This is a terribly unfinished painting from 2020.

When Covid-19 broke out and the world went into chaos of sickness, fear, terror, isolation, death, division, anger, hate… I was going to paint something dark. BUT my hand started covering the whole canvas in BRIGHT yellow…
Because HOPE & Hurt can co-exist.
Because the “undertone” of human history is HOPE/God.
The Light isn’t just where the sunset hits the horizon.
It is EVERYWHERE.

As the pandemic dragged on, it became hard to distill a clear message for this painting. You can see it in my indecisive brush stokes, hesitation to paint strong shadows, and the stormy waves EVEN THOUGH I was sketching a rhythmic and peaceful waves at Shonan beach! My teacher commented, “The edge of the waves can’t be that white & bright if the sun is setting that low.” I went back to the photo and she was right... whoa, I admire artists who have observed the natural world so deeply for so long that they know these things.

I was struggling to find the correct blue for the ocean waves. Layering individual colors didn’t work. Store-bought sky blue pigment didn’t work. Mixing blue + white didn’t work. (White mineral pigment makes everything cloudy & creamy, not necessarily brighter hue.) I threw in a pinch of #白緑 (#byakuroku, soft emerald green with a tint of grey) to a mix of #群青 blue... and voila! It became the bright blue that i needed. The mystery of mineral pigments, y’all! Some people find it stressful, but others of us find it delightful. :)

If you’re a photographer, you would notice that the bottom part (where the sunlight is reflected on wet sand) looks unrealistic. The ‘actual reflection’ is probably 1/4 that size. But this is what artists get to do — paint from life WITH IMAGINATION, sometimes prophetically. A glorious beach sunset makes you feel as if the light fills the entire world. And THAT is my prayer for this painting.

Painting this sky was a battle of darkness vs. light, and I came down with a fever. As I prayed throughout the night between sleep and headache, a thought came to mind: “WASH AWAY the sky. Let go.” Next morning I woke up with a washed mind. The part of me that had been grumbling was removed and I could see situations through the lens of God's goodness. Only then I noticed that the sky has a different texture(?) from the land & ocean. The sky is light, translucent, and deep. So I washed off the layers of various tones of blue (see the photo below - yes, the hemp paper is strong).

Gosh, this is messy and ongoing. But so is our battle for hope and justice. Some steps forward and some steps back. We just keeping looking at the burst of hope in the darkness. An eye-piecing brightness of the sun that sets over the ocean. The glorious 15-30min when the sunset takes over the view, and you no longer notice the dark clouds in the sky. <— I was using various yellow & gold pigments to paint it but it wasn’t working. Teacher showed me that all i needed was a tiny dab of white (oyster shell pigment)! It’s hard to tell in the photo, but the before-after in real life was magical!

Why darken the sky when you can brighten the sun?
Isn’t that the power of hope anyway?
Neither ignoring the darkness or being consumed by it.
But a bold stroke of pigments, splattering over both light & darkness.

Life cannot be processed with a binary mindset (light or dark, good or bad, right or wrong), but can only make sense with a touch of hope.