The finding of breadcrumbs

Introduction

There is always things I will not understand, there is always things I am trying to figure out. My intuition and memories are combined together, and they have became the puzzle I am trying to solve inside my own paintings. Painting is a medium of self-discovery, a conversation between me, myself and a fraction of a self-portrait. I cannot fully understand myself, I don’t have the answer for every single questions that are spoken on a painting. I do create problems and questions, and I do like to solve them, or, they can also remain unsolved. I am enjoying the opaque cover of my own identity. It is hidden under every shape and colour on the canvas. I am my own audience. The purpose of this piece of writing is to try different methods of understanding how to solve the puzzles in my paintings.

Decoding, puzzle.

Process is the key evidence into solving this puzzle. I focus more on the process than the outcome of painting, as I believe the process always says more. The process of painting is involved with decision making, choosing material, and showing what is involved within a painting. The method of painting from this perspective intricately absorbs longer thinking processes than the action. Every decision made in the painting process supports key evidence for the content and subject of the painting. How to decide on colours, shapes, compositions, transparency, vagueness - and how the paint is applied through different methods or brush strokes that will speak for themselves directly. Through the process I understand more about my intention and my intuition

Although I am the creator of my own work, I am fighting with my paintings all the time. I’m struggling between my intuitive decisions and my logical decisions. Is my intuitive brain delivering the content I want the painting to have?

Therefore I’m interested in the distance between the participating viewer and the actual content of the painting. Are shapes and colour in painterly language presenting universal information?

Or, is my palette/shapes only surviving through my memory, and I am isolating myself in my own painting.

As I paint, I sketch, the same characters.

And similar landscapes, similar shapes keep replicating.

They appear several times across different paintings, always present, but never identical, yet always relational.

I want to know why certain things keep coming back.

How does my intuition connect with the rest of the world ?

What point of view do I share with the rest of human species ?

Where do I truly belong ?

Through ongoing research and continued forms of observation and prolonged attention to each work, certain choices have helped me reconsider and discover what my intuition brings to the table.

Repetition is important to this process, the works talk back to what is already on the canvas.

I review the content again and again to have a further conversation into my next move.

Naturally, I consider where such intuitive thinking comes from; a universal language among humans, a memorial moment in my childhood, or, just a meaningless combination. I would like to decode my painting with different interpretations surrounding meaning, symbolism, cultural history, childhood, alongside questions of personal identity and belonging.

In exposing a narrative of lesser known characters that return and effortlessly reappear through subconscious patterns, I decided to write them down as another way to document the unexplained content of my paintings. When I put them into words, I often discover new fragments.

My writing, like my painting and even my sense of self, exists in a state of continual motion.I will not have answers of my question. This text will focus on the process my way of finding the answers. It is an open ending text.

What is circle?

The word ‘shape’ is a two dimensional term. It is almost like a silhouette, an outline of something, an abstracted object or abstracted information (similiar to icon). Immediately after thinking about shape, I started thinking about the two dimensional space that is trapped by the shape. “Shapes aren’t boundaries, and they aren’t colour; If anything, they ask you to see both everything that we separate out from shape (weight, texture, colour and so on) and then how those “other” aspects become shape.”(Silman, 2020:104)

How far do people read into abstract shapes?

The non verbal, non linguistic format of transforming information in it’s prehistoric period. Circular shapes can be a representation of the sun in some ancient culture. The Golden Sun Bird (Fig.1) is an ancient artefact located at Jinsha Archaeological site in the city of Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China. It is a pattern suggesting that there is a spinning sun inside one circular shape, with four birds surrounding it spinning in the other direction. This shape is the presentation of sun worshipping and the universe in ancient culture. I am curious that a circular shape is used as a frame, when there is no knowledge of the artist. This piece knows the sun is spinning, or, the earth is proven to be a circular planet. There are similar shapes created to worship the sun in different periods of time in different cultures across the earth. Mostly, the sun is contained inside a circle.

I am questioning if there is a universal understanding, or, a shared consciousness within all of humanity. Especially when it comes to sculpture, the circular shape takes longer to make. Traditional Chinese architecture from Fujian has a circular hole in the centre, to let the residents see the sky contained in this circular shape, which presents that the Chinese ancient slang- the sky is round. Many round objects appear in human life, coins and plates are always considered to be in a round shapes, this rule applies to almost every culture.

I see large scale circular shapes as the frame of my work, they contain anything inside their enclosed space.(Fig. 2) the circular frame is a trap, the wall of a well that keeps the subject inside.

It is opening up as it is capable to contain anything and at the same time, it is trapping everything inside itself. The circular frame has been a method for me to unite objects in one trapped space, to re-emphasis that the painting itself is one singular object/scene/environment. The earth itself is a round object, even though everything sits on top of the circle instead of inside the earth. The circular frame inside the physical canvas frame is a second boundary I am setting - to mimic the alienated environment, the separation of time and space to a further level. Shaping the frame myself is a way to enter the painting. (Silman, 2020:104) As a member of Gen-Z generation, the TV screen and display screen planted the idea of frame in a frame. Therefore you can enter another reality by looking at what is inside the frame.

Figure 1. The Golden Sun Bird, excavated from Jinsha Site, Chengdu. Source: Chengdu Jinsha Site Museum (2020) Archaeology at Jinsha: Exploring the Beliefs of the Ancient Shu People. Chengdu: Chengdu Jinsha

Figure 2. Prisoners. Oils on linen. Artist's own work

Orange 

"Would you like to have some?"

"I've never had it before. I've never tried this. I'd like to give it a go." "Let me slice it for you."

 Slices of orange, seven or eight in total, lay in front of me. I didn't know how to eat them. I was curious why the peel was still attached. I was also curious about how symmetrical it is once sliced open. Yet some were less symmetrical. Clearly, the person who sliced them wasn't the most meticulous in the world. One slice was particularly large, another unusually small. Big. Big. Medium. Small. Small. Medium. Some still had white fibres attaching.

 Sour but refreshing, the strange fullness and the collapsing texture of the juicy bits brought me joy. As a first-time experience, I knew this was the most delightful surprise I could get.

"I want more."

I ate three plates of sliced oranges. Like a desert drinking water for the first time. "You might get sick. ”

"Just one more plate?" "Okay."

I was satisfied with my request being granted. I was satisfied with fulfilling my desire once again, even though I hadn't realized I had only ever seen orange slices and never a whole orange.

"I told you ."

I never ate sliced oranges again. I like enjoying things without pressure, but slicing an orange seems to have become my secret desire. The privilege to ask him to slice the orange is also gone.

 Sliced oranges reacted with oxygen, it is turning dry just like any memories. I am then constantly told how much does one whole orange weight, I can never cut an orange. I can only peel it from the outside. The juice will be squeezed in my nails, I am pretending I never knew it can be sliced.

The orange ball is weighing, more and more, heavier and heavier. No one ever will remember one individual orange right? I want to experience that orange again. I want the first time experiences to repeat. The sliced orange became my signal for adventure, and all adventure will die in the end when the freshness disappears in your mouth.

I want my father to slice it again.

I am going to add a bit shadow underneath that orange ball, to make it heavier.

I painted ‘The End’ (Fig. 3)mainly based on the piece of creative writing above. Orange as a colour in my perspective is one of the most vibrant colours, which represents endless movement, adventure, new experience and ignorance. A lot of my intuitive definition towards colour is based on strong impressions of one memory, and combination of understanding towards objects that share similar colours. The Sun is orange/golden is a universal understanding, this might be one of the reasons that the material of artifact ‘The Golden Sun Bird’ is carved with thin sheet of gold.

“The orange tones of sunrise and sunset are influenced by a natural phenomenon called ‘scattering’. When the sun is near the horizon, sunlight passes through more air in the earth’s atmosphere. Blue and violet light is scattered, but the colour with longer wavelengths- yellow, orange and red pass through.”(Travis, 2020)

Therefore orange can create the sense of beginning, new and fresh as a sunrise. In my painting ‘prisoners’(Fig. 2), the main character is coated with a bright orange, and is acting violently in this scene, destroying everything they are looking at, the orange colour brings a reckless, ignorance and dangerous characteristic to this character.

Figure 3. The End. Oil on canvas. Artist’s own work.

The end’ is the finish point of the orange’s adventure, the sliced oranges will be remaining in the background but will not be in the future. The sudden pause.

Red

Synaesthesia works naturally in my daily life, and helps give out intuitive inspiration, involved with decision making in my painting. My syndrome of Synaesthesia is relating everything (especially numbers and letters) to a certain colour, then to a certain shape. “While different individuals usually do not report the same colors for all letters and numbers, studies with large numbers of synesthetes find some commonalities across letters (e.g., A is likely to be red).”(Wikipedia, 2024) As a matter of fact, the letter A in my mind is also red. Based on this research, I am more confirmed the meaning and information from intuition can be related to a universal understanding, even if the reason behind is still undiscovered.

Crimson red is always making a long and never ending sound to suggest its presence in a low tone, which makes this colour not disturbing but become the base of everything. Everything stands on it, but is also rejected by it. There is a clear boundary to set the hierarchy between crimson and other reds. It is taking over the space, it is announcing its presence, it is surrounding the whole world. Containing, giving you a hug, but trapping you inside its solid wall. The presence is too strong that I cannot see the physical body, just like I cannot see the whole planet earth.

The crimson red appears in most of my paintings, as a representation of the unbreakable, holiness, with a serious characteristic, usually it is used to magnify and enhance the solidness and importance of a shape. In my subconscious, a strong sense of religious and governmental characteristic is always combined with this colour. I took several trips to Tibet when I was a child mainly because I am from a Buddhist family.(Fig. 4) Most of the architectures there have the

crimson red colour, as well as all the monks’ clothes. Therefore the special religious culture forms a spectacle of human made crimson colour which appears all over the whole area. This spectacle then leaves a strong impression in my memory that crimson red is representing the most solid quality as a colour.

Figure 4. Crimson monastery in Tibet. Photograph by the author, 2014. Taken during the trip to Tibet mentioned in the text

I discovered that crimson red has always existed in my subconscious, linking me to a version of myself that I do not know. I realized that I never truly understand myself nor the content of my paintings. This is an awkward discovery—just like how some people are born unable to feel pain, I need a medium to truly understand myself.

I suddenly became aware of my dependence on crimson red. I once had a crimson sweater, I lost it when I went back to China. The colour has become a symbol. I began to symbolize my memories, reducing them to mere colors on a canvas. I could no longer purely recall the emotions I once had toward these memories. Painting gradually strips me apart, dissecting myself layer by layer— what colour is from which memory? As I fragment myself, I carefully categorize my memories, unwilling to miss any shape or colour in my brain that could be analyzed, so that I can solve the puzzle.

The brush strokes and the shape combine with colour can change massively the original universal understanding of colour. In contract, as red is a solid colour for me, I always make sure it is sitting with a solid shape.

The obstacles reaching from outside of the frame are in a brighter red tone, which is less solid than the crimson, and also presenting as more mystical, as the obstacles are always reaching from the hierarchical world, outside of the frame, implying that the world in the frame is always spied on or controlled by a higher dimension or a higher class. Similarly, the British Royalty and power is represented by the red leather of the despatch box first used for parliamentary papers by Queen Elizabeth I in Tudor England.(Travis, 2020:104)Culturally, colour can represent different meanings. Red can also represent communism. As a Chinese resident who has seen the Chinese national flag all the time throughout my life, red does not represent communism at all in my painting. Which means I filter out some information that is highly related to me when I encounter some situations of decision making. The main impression of one colour is not defined by my country or education, just as a tourist will assume red is the signature colour on representing UK, meanwhile I think it is so much more than only the colour red.

...the creature that floats outside of dimension...

Octopuses have always been described as unknown, and more often, mysterious creatures. Perhaps it is because they have a soft, slimy body. Or, it can be because they have three hearts, nine brains, which made them an extremely clever specie. Their soft tentacles and massive body bring me both fear, love and intrigue. The ocean is ruled within a completely different system of governance compared to terrestrial animal life. Marine creatures lack facial expressions, and their body temperatures are relatively low. Humans often have no empathy towards them, tossing them into boiling pot while they are still alive—burning and scalding them to death. Yet, you can’s see any expression on their faces, they can’t even blink since they have no eye lids. No scream is made, not even a gasp, they get burned into silence.

I witnessed an octopus being thrown into a hot pot alive, it is known as the restaurant’s famous dish，there are always audiences, enjoying this little show, watching the octopus sink and imagining how tasty it will become. The octopus is climbing faster than usual in this little cube, the suckers are beating like it’s heart beats on the transparent lid of the pot, it is sucking, then releasing, then sucking. I wonder which heart will stop beating first, and i wonder what will the last thought will be in all the brains it has. Humans have this weird internal fear towards the octopus, and yet, at the same time they are enjoying the sashimi and the hotpot. I like imagining how it would feel to hug an octopus? Their tentacles will give you the biggest hug, it will be surrounding you, it will strangle you, and it will share it’s ice cold temperature with you. The slimy liquid will linger and stay permanently on you. I imagine how the blue blood runs through their veins, like an alien.

I am not sure when, the octopus invaded my images, it floats in the middle of the air, just like Ghast in Minecraft (Mojang Studios, 2011). It is watching over, spying on everything, meanwhile has no interest in anything going on in this image. The octopus has became a symbol. They are identified as a creature from another dimension, therefore It exhibits something a gesture full of attitude towards the lower dimensions—its lazy gaze and limp tentacles suggesting apathy. Yet, due to its massive form and an overwhelming desire for control, its limbs frequently extend outward, trying to cage the world beneath it.

I attempt to bring out the Cthulhu horror elements of the octopus to evoke a sense of suffocating dread in lower-dimensional beings.

Perhaps, through the symbolism of the octopus, the lower dimensions may come to realize that they are nothing more than trapped 2D paper figures—who has a hollow heart, never will have a powerful brain like the octopus, nor ever will obtain the true freedom. They are trapped by the boundaries of the canvas, imprisoned by the very symbols that constitute their existence.

Some characters within these paintings have already realized their eternal entrapment, understanding that they will never break free—they exist solely within the artwork. I intend to use this as a strategy to break the forth wall, and question the connection between the viewer and the painting by raising the connection between the octopus and the creatures. Just as we gaze upon the octopus, so too does the octopus gaze upon the lower dimensions.

 In the movie Nope(Peele, 2022), the spectacle of the not moving cloud left such a strong impression that viewers found themselves observing the sky even after they had finished watching the film. (Though the lack of solidness in the sky gives me a slight sense of the absurd) The recurring presence of the octopus in the sky not only transforms it into a symbolic element but also makes it a spectacle that I want to incorporate into my paintings. A strange, absurd atmosphere lingers throughout the artwork, enveloping it in an eerie sense of unease

Characters

The characters in my paintings appear in a fragmented form, they do not have their own identity. They exist as fragments, only have one surface. I want them to be symbols. They share one conscious and use the same mind. In a way, they form parts of my own identity. I use them to express the thoughts and emotions that I do not wish to convey through my true self. They have become my diary, a visual record of what remains unsaid. The multiple repeating patterns will be obvious if the viewer is observing multiple paintings together, same characters appears in different environment. Sometimes they appear multiple times in one single painting as well. When they turn into a symbol, they become less unique, they can be reproduced easily.They keep repeating, almost become just a shape. Every single time they repeat, they tell their story again. The story eventually will become a symbol. The symbol represent certain complex emotion/story that cannot be explained by using one single word.

Figure 5. Sketch on paper. Artist’s own work.

I am sitting at a dining table, unaware of when does this begin and unsure of when it will end.

At this moment, i begin thinking, really start thinking, while I am on the dining table, do I turn into food, or do I turn into the main character of the story? Did I stand on the table by my own will? Maybe I am both the main character and the food. Everything seems like to be surrounding me, not as in the reality. It used to bother me that nothing is really surrounding me in the reality.

My husband and I argue often—but perhaps not that often. He has been away and working in Shanghai all the time, while I stay in my hometown, a small town nearby the sea. I have to stay and take care of our daughter. He always remains silent, he sits on the bed and listens to me wining, shouting, swearing, and never fighting back. I’m always running. I run on the street and go under my neighbor's window, tell them out loud how my husband never comes home, meanwhile he is probably packing his suitcase, silently. I am good at letting everything out of my chest, I spit, I say, I am a fountain, I let the emotion ride over me. At this moment, I feel like I am standing on the dining table, the light is shining on me, I feel seen. I am the main character. Sometimes, my husband speaks back, he can no longer bear with it. He also starts running, as fast as he can, escaping to the other side of life, at the farthest edge of our small town, the pier that will take him to Shanghai. Perhaps he, too, is searching for a table of his own. When he left, I felt my own dining table shrinking, bit by bit. But at least my daughter is still watching me.

I am always running. No matter when or where, the moment I stop, it feels as if the Earth's rotation shifts directly above me, pressing me down into the deepest part of the universe. So, I have done many things. I raised my daughter alone. By the time she turned 24, I had spent 24 years fulfilling my role as a mother. And then, I began the work of being a mother’s mother. I have taken on dozens of other jobs as well— collecting wealth, as if standing on a higher pile of it would keep me from being crushed. So I keep running. At first, I knew my destination—perhaps it was my daughter's 24th birthday, or the moment I purchased the tenth apartment and paid my ten mortgages every month. But slowly, the finish line faded from view. Now, I run endlessly, like a hamster on a wheel. I am just running. The only thing I want is to keep running. Because if I stop, I will have to face the truth—that I have spent my life running toward nothing, with no destination, no purpose.

Until I found myself at this dining table. In the darkness, my pupils dilated infinitely. The moment I stopped running, I could no longer pay my tenth mortgage every month. I could no longer find my family—they had long been left behind, lost somewhere in the distance. I saw many things surrounding me, yet no one was willing to come close. No one wanted to sit at the table with me. They all just watched—staring at me, like a main character, like a dish waiting to be served. The bright side is, I no longer worry. There is no finish line, no past, no future. All I need to know is that I am still the main character, that many eyes are still on me, even if I had never truly been running at all. I miss the windows beneath which my neighbors stood.

Bridge

There is awkward eye contact in the frame, and action that is paused half way through. Awkwardness is an indescribable expression, like a ghost hidden in the shadows, a salad that is made of four tangled emotions. Mixing a little something into something else, and the whole thing suddenly becomes awkward. Under this condition, the visual gaze lingers longer, Who is starring will have longer and deeper thinking process.

I want to express something in my paintings that can’t be understood at first glance. Therefore I intentionally create contradictions— there are different gravities in one image, and different timeline. There are floating figures unsure how to control their own bodies.Their journey is drifting in chaos, uncertain of where it leads. The time is still moving during this journey, the time is leaking everywhere, The C key of piano is constantly existing, making the noise and hovering in the background—or perhaps a sound like persistent tinnitus.

The viewer will taste the awkwardness and discomfort after the first glance, taste the complex salad—bitter vegetable with palatable dressing. I believe my paintings must remain neutral, where life and death are always equal, death is just another state of living. These two states blur together on my canvas, and become nothing more than a physical state.

I attempt to describe the psychological state of my characters from a third- person perspective—through the direction of their gaze, the sweat left on their skin, the relationship and distance between them and the surrounding objects.

Their awkward stares directly at the viewers. The gaze extends longer and longer, reaching beyond the edge of the frame. And yet, subjective emotion is missing—they are missing their own identity. They are projecting the external environment.

Yu Hua’s Boy in Twilight (Yu, 2014), particularly in chapter nine, describes a story stage on a bridge which deeply inspired me. The first half of this story is describing the environment on a bridge—yet says nothing about the plot or the figure’s inner thinking process. The details are filled with discomfort things in mundane , like a packaging seal you just can’t open. The third person view enhance the unspeakable element of this story. Especially that it is staged on a bridge—an unstable, unsettling place, with a single drop of sweat, the story is stopped with a rush ending.

The third person view point of painting is making me aware of space between different elements in one image, and what environment will I put them in.

Background

The background has always been a crucial element in my work. It serves as the foundation that supports the main subjects, tightly holding onto the space around them. Sometimes, I need it to be suffocating, dominating the entire composition. But more often, I need it to create space, to allow for openness.

I have always believed that the first brush stroke on a canvas carries the original energy, which is why I like to preserve certain raw elements—pencil marks, the texture of the canvas itself. To me, a blank canvas is filled with possibility and power. Keeping the original background unpainted is a way of preserving the strength of emptiness.

Every erase and destroy leaves a trace. When we struggle against something, our minds become consumed by the struggle itself. The same happens in painting. To stay focused on my intended expression, I deliberately erase any signs of struggle, carefully planning each step to amplify my initial expression rather than letting the painting be overtaken by conflict.

The negative space between objects, between figures, is their distance. It is open-ended to paint, and constant to consider how this evolves.

Bibliography

Silman, A. (2020) The OG, vol. 14, Shapes.

Chengdu Jinsha Site Museum (2020) Archaeology at Jinsha: Exploring the Beliefs of the Ancient Shu People. Chengdu: Chengdu Jinsha Site Museum.

Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin.

Travis, T. (2020) The V&A Book of Colour in Design. London: Thames & Hudson.

Image reference on page 10- Oranges. Composite of painting details and photographs by the author.

Wikipedia (2024) Synesthesia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia (Accessed: 24 March 2025).

Lovecraft, H.P. (1928) The Call of Cthulhu.

Guerra, C. and Amodio, P. (2018) ‘Octopus cognition: A comparative approach’,Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 24, pp. 38–44. 

Peele, J. (2022) Nope[Film]. Universal Pictures.

Yu, H. (2014) Boy in Twilight: Stories of the Hidden China. Translated by A.H. Barr. New York: Pantheon Books. Chapter 9.

 Mojang Studios (2011) Minecraft [Video Game]. Microsoft.