Yuanjie

This painting emerges from my long-term meditation practice and presents a visualized structure of inner perception. The hands, rendered in pearlescent white and emerging from zones of brightness, represent sensation in its physicalized form. Some gestures, like praying, lowering, or lifting, come from my body’s natural postures during meditation. Others, such as clenched fists or tense fingers, capture how my body reacts to anxiety and pain in daily life.

These hands are not merely visual elements but form a boundary in the painting. They clearly divide the external environment from the internal world of consciousness. There is a ritualistic quality to them that echoes spiritual iconography. For me, they represent how I understand the outside world through tangible sensation.

My internal world consists of the brain and the heart. The brain functions like a passageway or security gate. It filters and organizes incoming sensation. The heart, on the other hand, is the emotional center. It is where longing, familial ties, and trauma converge. Between the two exists both connection and tension.

From the brain flow three visual pathways. One is the red vein-like structure, symbolizing biological and emotional connection. Another is the fluid trail of sensation that slips into the heart even when observed mindfully. The third consists of yellow-green sigils. These reflect my visceral aversion to New York, a reaction to its chemical coldness, indifference, and suffocating presence that silently enters my emotional core.

At the center of the painting, the heart is built with sculptural material. It is raw and fleshy, both powerful and wounded. From it radiates warmth as well as pain. Its red pigment bleeds into nearby abstract glyphs, pink lines that resemble branches or cells. These represent hope and emotional growth. But as they approach the black abyss at the bottom of the canvas, they break, dim, and eventually vanish.

The painting is structured with a gradient from dark to light, recalling the divine light in religious iconography. In reverse, it may also suggest that sensations arise from a black, unknown depth and gradually enter the field of awareness. Each interrupted line, like Morse code, reflects the unstable rhythm of emotion and perception.

For me, this painting is both a spiritual construction and a meditation on the body and sensation. It is a gate of no self through which I repeatedly pass to navigate between perception and emotion. It is not a self-portrait but a diagram of how I process the world.