The Gardener
The Gardener, 2025
Acrylic, soil pigment, pencil & gold pigment on ebru marbled paper in wooden frame
48.2 x 31.3 cm
Photo
SUCHSIZE / Yukawa Nakayasu
The first part of the stamp painting series 'As roots to trees, as sea to streams', whose title stems from a Vietnamese proverb and the practice of honoring family history, is greatly inspired by my grandmother, the array of characters surrounding her and sometimes hidden corners of their lives. 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.
I depicted my grandmother tending her 'Bauhinia variegata' tree among lines of her poem 'Solitude', which she wrote after my grandfather, and many of her literary friends, passed away. It captures a moment of both melancholy and fortitude at a fragile age. One of the lines, which roughly translates to "Trees don the white band, the rain whimpers," expresses inevitable sorrow (as the white band is used in traditional funerary clothing in Vietnam), while the last lines imbue a sense of courage – to continue living and cherishing life, even though in solitude.