Grandma’s Garden
Grandma’s Garden, 2025
Acrylic, soil pigment & gold pigment on paper in hand-carved wooden frame
36 x 23.8 cm
Photo
SUCHSIZE / Yukawa Nakayasu
This belongs to the first part of my stamp painting series ‘As Roots to Trees, as Sea to Streams’. Inspired by a Vietnamese proverb, the series draws on the practice of honoring family history and lineage. Instead of the usual motifs of celebrated public figures, world heritage sites, plants, or extinct animals found in Vietnamese stamps, the first part of the series seek to preserve personal and familial narratives.
'Grandma's Garden' is a tribute to my beloved grandmother and the women of her generation who not only brilliantly fulfilled familial and social responsibilities, but also found great strength and solace in tending their soulful gardens.
The garden in this painting is inspired by the verdant one that belonged to my grandparents. It witnessed the changes of seasons, of our family, and of the Doi Moi period, until the 2000s, when it was lost to urbanisation. During its 13-year-bloom, it was where my cousins & I grew up and learnt our first lessons about nature, about living with compassion, and in harmony with nature.