Sunflowers

In this project, I grow sunflowers and I want to use them to interact with my body in order to produce some paintings. I seeded 72 sunflowers and intended to generate some inspiration from them in order to produce some paintings. In the end, after the flowers died out, I used the seeds combining with some twist images of my own body to create some paintings. The paintings have interpreted the meaning of different degrees of my personal feelings of pain and emotional suffering due to the fact my Mother passed away at the time I was in the process of making my sunflower paintings.

I chose the sunflowers seed from Netherlands because that’s where Van Gogh comes from. He was the first painter gave me a sensational shock when I visited the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, I was young and know nothing about art.

From the beginning, I was inspired by an English Philosopher ‘Robert Fludds’. His theories involve human and plant are internal world which he named it ‘Mircrocosm’. The sky, the universe are external world that is ‘Macroscosm’.

Through this theory and my growing sunflowers process, I want to create an experience that can build up a relationship between my own body and the sunflowers in the similar territory. That can enable myself to contemplate and identifly myself with the sunflowers.

We know sunflowers follow the sun and absorbed its energy, when the flower’s died off, the seed inside the sunflowers like the stars hiding in its internal eye. The seed simply become a symbol of rebirth that’s how the life circle continue.

This beautiful natual theory inspired me to do a painting about millions stars falling from the sky indicate life and death is going round a circle and it is never end.

The first work I have done in this project.

To me, the blue background is like external world as ‘Macrocosm’ in ‘Robert Fludds’ theory and the sunflower is like an internal world as ‘Microcosm’.

What I do in this work is I try to represent the sunflowers look like human, have a body with bone and leaves like a flesh on it.

The train indicate a circle of life. It symbolic of journeys, no matter how far we travel, in the end, we always going back from the starting point just like the train go back to the station where it departed.

Also the train is my personal dedicate for a Japanese comic artist 'Leiji Matsumoto', the spirit of his 80's' comics which always give me a strength no matter and wherever I am. It is an encouragement for life.

The image of the train was also inspired by a caterpillar, when I found a big caterpillar eating my sunflower’s leaf, I wonder what it's fate to be? Will it become a beautiful butterfly or not ? The same situation apply to this project, I never know what would my project look like at the end.

In some level, the caterpillar and my painting process is the same equal progress.

The caterpillar left a big hole on the sunflower’s leaf; I picked it up and looking through the hole that I discover another world through the hole. That reminds me of ‘Robert Fludds’ theory. I am the internal world as microcosm and look out through the hole for the external world.

That’s inspire me did the three paintings, what I did is I was doing a reverse version of Robert Fludd theory.

I see my body is ‘Macrocosm’ and my flesh, my blood, my cell all inside my body as ‘Microcosm’.

The process continues on

' Sunflowers 2 '