Plum Trees Are Losing Their Flowers; acrylic paint, ink, and pigment on canvas.
This work is inspired by a haiku by Yosa Buson.
Yosa Buson (1716–1784) was both a poet and a painter; the ume (plum tree) runs through his work as a central motif. His haikus dedicated to plum blossoms evoke fragile beauty, purity, nobility, and the memory of love.
Falling as a pictorial language:
My composition relies on the tension between a geometric structure and an uncontrollable organic impulse.
The pink splashes visually embody the movement of falling. The projected and splattered paint evokes impermanence in its most physical sense: matter set free, liberated, and beyond control. In the haiku tradition, the falling of petals symbolizes both death and the ephemeral nature of life.