artist statement: Tidal Wave

Tidal Wave was a series of transformation paintings that elevated twice. My original painting underneath was a painting of a memory back in Hawaii. It was the beach I would go to, with my mom and her boyfriend, Mokule’ia beach, and I used to remember going there during the weekends with them. It was calm and the water was so clear. Remembering the bond I had with them feels bittersweet now. My mind wanted to move on from that memory, since I grew distant from my relationship with my mom and her boyfriend. I wanted to create something else from simple beach painting. So my painting evolved, twice. The first evolution was a story of a princess escaping the castle in the clouds, but it didn’t feel enough. So I wanted to add more. I listened to my heart and my hands wanted to paint a sea goddess rising from the moon, in the middle of a storm. My childhood memories with my mom and her boyfriend and my current relationship with them was twisting me up inside, and so a part of me wanted to express that in a huge tidal wave, crashing down on that beach that I used to go to. It’s almost as if my brain wanted to erase it.