The Inverted World

Peering into a puddle, you see the sky. Clouds, power lines, sometimes even your own face reflected there. Yet, it is not the actual sky. It is an unstable world, inverted upside down, its shape shifting with the slightest ripple.

When I paint abstract art, I cherish this sense of "inversion." I don't try to paint what I see directly. Rather, I wonder how what should be visible changes when viewed from another angle. It is precisely at that ambiguous boundary that I feel the entrance to painting lies.

The sky in a puddle is more delicate than the real thing. It distorts when the wind blows, shatters when someone passes by. Its ephemerality seems to gently remind us of the unreliability of the world we take for granted as "certain" every day.

That's why, when I see a puddle, I think of a canvas. The layers of color spreading across the flat cloth somehow resemble the water's surface. What will be reflected there? Or will it reflect nothing, leaving only ripples?

The act of stepping in

Puddles are also things we avoid. Unconsciously, we step around them, not wanting to get our shoes wet. But what about when we were children? Don't you remember wearing rubber boots and deliberately splashing through them?

When I hit a creative wall, I sometimes deliberately step into the "murky" parts. I break up the carefully composed structure or the neatly arranged color palette. I disrupt the calculations and leave it to chance. It's like throwing a stone into the water.

In that instant, the image collapses. The sky that was reflected distorts, its form lost. Yet within that distortion, lines emerge that can only appear there, and colors blend together by chance. I pick these up, as it were, and decide my next stroke.

A puddle is not merely a passive reflector. It responds when touched, changes when stirred. Within it lies a small dialogue with the world.

Painting must surely be the same. Not simply mirroring the world as it is, but gently stirring it. Touching it as if asking a question. Only then might a landscape emerge, one you yourself never anticipated.

Time of Drying

A puddle is not eternal. When the sun comes out, it vanishes before you know it. The place that held the sky just moments ago returns to being mere asphalt.

This disappearance feels somewhat lonely, yet simultaneously pure. It seems to say: there's no need to hold onto everything.

Sometimes, after gazing at a painting for a while, I layer another color over it. The layer I once cherished may become invisible. Yet the color that sank beneath it isn't completely gone. Like the trace of a dried-up puddle, though invisible to the eye, it remains there, undeniably.

Puddles appear for just a moment, turning the world upside down, then quietly vanish. In that brief time, I sense something like the reason I paint.

If you find a small puddle at your feet today, please pause just a moment. Another sky might be spreading out there. And within its shimmer, your own outline should be softly reflected.