When I start my art-making process, I imagine myself swimming in a sea of images. Of course, which part of the sea the artist swims in depends on her respective life experience, memory, and history. I am well aware of what kind of pictures saturate my area of the sea; it is filled with the still-images of my everyday surroundings. I see my husband Adam in his chair, dropping his head with exhaustion after a hot day at work, and a wobbly plant (losing its leaves) sits on the kitchen window, the pecan tree waving; these simple moments compel me to record them and begin a visual journey.
Once immersed in my image sea, other pictures start to reveal themselves, more spectacular ones, sometimes materializing out of a distant memory. In the morning filled with sunshine, I was on my way to school, passing the People's Plaza; the broadcasting speaker reaching to the sky, playing a familiar Mao-era song at the same time every day. This is 1993 in Lichuan, the little mountain town in Hubei province, which, like thousands of other cities in China, is about to change dramatically as the capitalist free market economy replaces the dreaded Planned Economy, but I was too young to notice that. These golden mornings have become still images, in the shadow of the broadcast speaker, a song played again and again.
An earlier picture floating in the sea: a young Chinese man standing in front of a row of tanks. I was three when the picture was taken in 1989. But again, I was not aware of it until the summer when I arrived in the United States at twenty years old. How is it I had never seen this? Sometimes, an image can be floating in the dark for many years - I suppose that one can be temporarily unencumbered by the history and memory of their own culture.
There are images I gravitate to, such as ink landscape paintings nestled throughout Chinese history. Zhu Da is a painter who captivated me initially. Literati paintings about rocks, trees, and birds, I love them for their sophisticated and effortless touch. Later, this love expanded to include ancient murals and miniature paintings. I have thousands of them floating in my sea, although I only know some of the artists and their names.
The sea of images expands every day; I also add my own images to it, but there is a danger of drowning. Signifiers can overflow like algae, and meanings may be diminished in cliché or obscurity. To reject that, one stays afloat by a repetitive exercise of letting go of pictorial burdens—those are conventions, and some are too dear to the artist. A yearning for clarity and depth helps, an impulse gushes from within, a thought of will: "create...draw...re-write." The infallible studio and the making process will serve as an anchor. One dives toward the darker part of the sea for an image that is yet unknown.
当我开始我的艺术创作过时，我想象自己在一片图像的海洋中游泳。当然，一个人游泳的海洋部分取决于她的生活经验，记忆和历史。我很清楚我所处的海域中充斥着什么样的图片；它充满了我日常环境中的静像。比如我看到我的丈夫亚当坐在椅子上，在一天辛苦工作后，他疲惫地低下头，厨房窗台上有一株摇摇晃晃的植物（正在失去叶子），后院胡桃树在刺眼的夏日下摇曳；这些简单的瞬间驱使我记录它们，是记录的开始。
一旦沉浸在我的图像中之海，其他图片开始显现出来，更壮观的图片，有时是从遥远的记忆中显现出来。在充满阳光的早晨，我正在去学校的路上，经过人民广场；广播扬声器伸向天空，每天同时播放一首熟悉的毛时代歌曲。这是1993年，位于湖北省的小山镇利川，就像中国的成千上万个其他城市一样，即将在资本主义自由市场经济取代计划经济的过程中发生巨大变化，但我当时还太小，没有注意到这一点。这些金色的早晨已经变成了静态图像，在广播扬声器的歌一样，一遍又一遍地播放。
在海洋中漂浮着的早期画面：一名年轻的中国男子站在一排坦克前面。那张照片是1989年拍摄的，那时我三岁。但再次说起，直到我20岁抵达美国的那个夏天，我才意识到这一点。为什么我以前从未见过这张照片？有时，一幅图像可以在黑暗中漂浮多年 - 我想一个人总是可以暂时的， 拒绝或者免于自己文化的历史和记忆的负担。
有些图像吸引着我，比如遍布中国历史的水墨山水画。朱耷是一位最初吸引我的画家。文人画中有关岩石，树木和鸟类的画作，我喜欢它们的精致和自然生趣。后来，这种喜爱扩展到了古代壁画和波斯细密画。我有成千上万张图片， 有的已经打印有的漂浮在我的海洋中，尽管我只认识有限其中一些艺术家和他们的名字。
图像的海洋每天都在扩展；我也会将自己的图像添加进去，但是请注意溺水的危险。象征物和虚无可能会像藻类一样泛滥，意义可能会在陈词滥调或模糊中减弱消亡。为了抵制这一点，艺术家通过重复的方式不断放下图像的负担，这些是传统，有些对艺术家来说太珍贵。对清晰和深度的渴望激励着我，内心永远涌动着一种冲动，一种意愿：“创造...绘画...重新再来一遍。” 工作室和创作本身就是的锚。我一个人潜向海洋的更深处，寻找那一张 已知和未知水乳交融的，尚未被发现的图片。
