Life in the bush of concrete 1 Print

My primary interest is how body/matter and mind/spirit/energy are related. In my work I investigate this relationship in myself, my life and my art, based on the conviction and experience that these seemingly separate objects are, in reality, one. In doing qi gong and Taoist meditation I experienced and cultivated energy and while living in China I grabbed the opportunity to study acupuncture to get a better understanding of health and illness in relation to that energy. The divisions, separations and blocks that people impose around themselves, their minds and their world are causes of illness,stress and unhappiness in life. My work grapples with the meaning of being human and the deeper questions of the relationships we have to our bodies. My intention is not to reproduce individual personalities but the life force itself as it manifests in outer form. Yet, in my work, it often appears that the bodies have no skin: they are transparent, built of layers of paint that allow the background colors to manifest in the same way that our spiritual and essential background manifest through our skin. While my early work played with the body as an expression of sexual energy transforming into spiritual energy, my work in Thailand, from 2002-2007, became more abstract. In a series of works called "Drawing the Line of Essence (DLE),” I created an abstract reality through painting inspired by a meditation from a book, The Secret of the Golden Flower, by Thomas Cleary. A commentary on the Tao Te Ching says, “The nature of water is to stay low, not to struggle and to take on the shape of its container. Thus nothing is weaker, But despite such weakness, it can bore through rocks, while rocks cannot wear down water.” During my exploration of the Taoist mountains in China with their temples and monks, one of these monks envisioned my name: Shui Nung Yun, meaning water forms clouds/ vapor. This is a transformation process. This transformation process and water have fascinated me and led me to make Mirror of Love and other installations which incorporate water. The project Vapor studies has the vapor aspect of water. Also my paintings Fluids have relations to the aspects of water. In my photos, reflections in water have become an important theme. The painting process is in my eyes an act of conscious aimlessness.