If I could hold the vanishing colors of the earth, and let them whisper their stories on my canvas_
then perhaps, painting would become more than expression. It would become listening. I begin by gathering remnants of places -fallen leaves, damp soil, dried petals, rusted stones -things the earth has already let go.
I press, grind, and filter them, not to possess, but to witness what remains. These colors are not made. They are remembered. The hues I bring to my canvas are not always pure.
They are quiet translations -softened, extended, sometimes changed- not for lack of sincerity, but because some colors arrive only once, and leave before I can call them by name.
In my work, I do not seek to capture nature.
I seek to be near it, to let its silence tint the surfaces I build. Each field of color holds not only pigment, but also distance, season, the texture of time. This is how I paint: not with the colors I command, but with the colors I’ve been entrusted to carry- before they vanish again.
A fragment of my childhood still lingers - a quiet memory of days spent not in the raucous play of the playground, but in hidden corners where the earth met my fingertips. There, I would gather petals and leaves, pressing them against stone, watching as their colors seeped into the world. It was a private ritual, a quiet discovery, long before I had the language to call it Art.
Years passed, and I found myself painting, teaching artist, and artist who speaking the language of visual expression. Somewhere along the way, those early moments faded into the background. But here, in Taiwan, they return to me-like colors that had merely settled into the paper’s fibers, waiting for water to awaken them. To extract color from nature may seem like an act of simple transference, a matter of preservation. But the act of seeking color is, in itself, part of the work—wandering, observing, attuning myself to the fleeting presence of nature in everyday life. The pigments I find are more than mere hues; they are echoes of time, fragments of landscape, an intimate vocabulary of the world as I experience it.
Lately, I am often asked.
"Do you bring these pigments directly onto the canvas?"
Perhaps the time has come to answer.
If the colors of nature could truly be captured, contained, and set upon canvas - would they still breathe? It is a question that I suspect many painters have pondered. For me, it has been both a longing and a quiet pursuit. These days, I find myself listening for nature’s response - waiting, asking again and again. And in its own way, nature answers. This pigment project is not merely a study of color. It is a meditation, a dialogue, a question posed to the earth itself. A search for the hues that slip between moments, for the fleeting traces of light and season, for the quiet, unspoken language of the natural world.