風浪．愛．苦難(Storms, Love and Suffering)

“When I was creating this piece, ‘Storms, Love, and Suffering,’ what I was thinking about wasn’t just the storms, and it wasn’t just the suffering. It was about how a person is carried through life, held up entirely by love.

On the left side of the canvas is the suffering of life. You can feel that the colors here are darker and heavier—blacks, browns, dark reds, and deep greens overlapping each other like layers of crushing weight. Those vertical lines dripping down? To me, they look like tears, and they look like scars. Sometimes, the pain of life doesn’t hit you all at once; it builds up bit by bit, slowly wrapping itself around you.

It could be loss, loneliness, sickness, or a broken relationship… or maybe a heavy, unspoken pressure or trauma. That massive patch of heavy color is exactly how suffering feels to me: chaotic, sticky, and suffocating. It feels like you’re trapped inside, and it’s incredibly hard to climb out on your own.

Then, on the right side of the canvas, are the storms. I used overlapping lines of whites, blues, and blacks. This isn’t a quiet sea. It is a churning, unstable, and violent state. Those lines twist and crash into each other, like the wind howling and the waves roaring. When you stand in the middle of it, you realize you have absolutely zero control over your direction. The storms represent the shifting of our external environment and the sudden, brutal challenges in life. Just when we think we are standing on solid ground, a sudden gust of wind or a massive wave hits, forcing us to realize just how limited we really are.

But the true center of this painting isn’t the suffering, and it isn’t the storms. It is this vertical stream of love woven with orange-yellow and white right in the middle.

I placed love at the absolute heart of the canvas, letting it flow all the way from the top to the bottom. That orange-yellow carries a physical warmth—it feels like fire, and it feels like light. The white brings a sense of purity, comfort, and hope. This isn’t a quiet, fragile kind of love. It is a love that pierces through darkness, steps into pain, and looks the storms right in the eye. This love doesn’t just sit on the sidelines and watch. It enters into our suffering, plunges into our storms, flows down, seeps in, and binds both sides together.

What I want to say is this: life doesn’t become completely free of suffering just because love exists. And the storms don’t magically stop the moment love arrives. But because of love, we find the strength to keep walking. Love doesn’t take away all our problems instantly; it holds us up at our lowest points. Love doesn’t wipe the storms from our lives; it gives us direction, courage, and a reason not to give up while we are in the middle of them.

So, the love in this painting isn’t just a decorative light. It is the core that holds everything together. The suffering on the left is heavy, and the storms on the right are chaotic, but the love in the center keeps the entire canvas from collapsing. It acts like a gateway of life, a divine pillar of support from above. When you are crushed by suffering and surrounded by storms, what truly carries you through isn’t necessarily your own strength—it is that love that still exists, still flows, and refuses to leave your side.

Scripture says, ‘In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.’

And it also says, ‘We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame.’

To me, ‘Storms, Love, and Suffering’ is a painting about the raw reality of life.
It doesn’t deny the pain, and it doesn’t sugarcoat the storms. But it refuses to let suffering have the final word.

Because between the suffering and the storms, love is still there. As long as love remains at the center, it is always possible for us to be held, to be healed, and to keep moving forward.”