Above: The upper surface of Surprise, Surprise No. 1 presents an atmospheric field suspended between ice, water, sky, and memory. The cool blue field carries the feeling of a frozen landscape, where translucent layers shimmer like light passing through ice or a crystal formation. Fragments of line and gesture appear almost like branches moving in winter wind or distant birds crossing an open sky.
The image holds the logic of a dream landscape: recognizable elements emerge without becoming fixed. A viewer may find a glacier, an ocean surface, an atmospheric event, or traces of wildlife, but the image remains intentionally unresolved. Like a remembered dream, it offers fragments of meaning without allowing them to settle into a single interpretation.
Below: Beneath the cool exterior is an entirely different energy. Saturated reds, oranges, pinks, and fluorescent passages rise through the translucent tracing paper like heat beneath ice. The hidden colors recall the internal flashes found in minerals such as opal and quartz, where unexpected colors appear only when light reaches the material from a particular angle.
The two surfaces create a conversation between stillness and intensity, between frozen landscape and internal combustion. Viewed together, they suggest that the surface is only one state of the image; another world exists beneath it, waiting to be revealed.
Reflection: The origins of Surprise, Surprise No. 1 reach back to drawings made during the isolation of the early pandemic period. Using sumi ink brush pens and flexible fine-line markers, I developed organic patterns influenced by movement, anatomy, and the forms of the animals around me, especially the striped patterns and physical gestures of my family cats.
These works became some of the first experiments with a found 3M laminating press, transforming drawing into a process of physical memory. A mark is made, folded away, altered by pressure, returned, and changed again. Like dreams themselves, the image contains traces of experiences that can never be completely reconstructed.
The series is also connected to the experience of watching dreams dissolve upon waking: vivid, emotionally charged images that feel meaningful while remaining impossible to fully translate. Through layered color, fractured forms, and shifting relationships between visible and hidden surfaces, Surprise, Surprise No. 1 explores the space between perception and interpretation—the moment when an image feels familiar before we know why.
Above: The upper surface of Surprise, Surprise No. 1 presents an atmospheric field suspended between ice, water, sky, and memory. The cool blue field carries the feeling of a frozen landscape, where translucent layers shimmer like light passing through ice or a crystal formation. Fragments of line and gesture appear almost like branches moving in winter wind or distant birds crossing an open sky.
The image holds the logic of a dream landscape: recognizable elements emerge without becoming fixed. A viewer may find a glacier, an ocean surface, an atmospheric event, or traces of wildlife, but the image remains intentionally unresolved. Like a remembered dream, it offers fragments of meaning without allowing them to settle into a single interpretation.
Below: Beneath the cool exterior is an entirely different energy. Saturated reds, oranges, pinks, and fluorescent passages rise through the translucent tracing paper like heat beneath ice. The hidden colors recall the internal flashes found in minerals such as opal and quartz, where unexpected colors appear only when light reaches the material from a particular angle.
The two surfaces create a conversation between stillness and intensity, between frozen landscape and internal combustion. Viewed together, they suggest that the surface is only one state of the image; another world exists beneath it, waiting to be revealed.
Reflection: The origins of Surprise, Surprise No. 1 reach back to drawings made during the isolation of the early pandemic period. Using sumi ink brush pens and flexible fine-line markers, I developed organic patterns influenced by movement, anatomy, and the forms of the animals around me, especially the striped patterns and physical gestures of my family cats.
These works became some of the first experiments with a found 3M laminating press, transforming drawing into a process of physical memory. A mark is made, folded away, altered by pressure, returned, and changed again. Like dreams themselves, the image contains traces of experiences that can never be completely reconstructed.
The series is also connected to the experience of watching dreams dissolve upon waking: vivid, emotionally charged images that feel meaningful while remaining impossible to fully translate. Through layered color, fractured forms, and shifting relationships between visible and hidden surfaces, Surprise, Surprise No. 1 explores the space between perception and interpretation—the moment when an image feels familiar before we know why.