There is a way the ocean's tide pulls you into it's depth that never returns you back to shore. Abstraction digs into your grave to gather the wreckage back to surface. The pthalos bled into the ocean that surrounded my childhood home of Miyakojima. Although the island is concealed inside the wide Pacific, its existence is unknown to much of the world, the piercing colors from Okinawa's landscape never washed away from my mind.
When you look into the bright sun for a long time, close your eyes, the yellow dot is permanently tattooed inside your eyelid, visible to the light even within the shadows. The colors of the hot pink hibiscus manifested on my paintings and the pthalo green that surrounded the small island spilled on to the canvas; these forms were rebirthed into abstraction. While I kept adding several layers of paint on to my canvas, I began to slowly peel off what I had tried so hard to cover—my hybrid identity. By creating a painting installation, I am defining my own identity through my experience. One that is unclear of how one culture blends into the other, created by the distortion of images from Okinawa, pictures of my family, bright saturated colors are combined to form a claustrophobic room.
