Three Happinesses

About this work

The title of this painting is Three Happinesses. When I began this work, I wasn't thinking about happiness as a simple emotion, or as something we can possess and hold onto. I was thinking more about those brief moments when we feel fully present in our lives—when, even for a moment, we feel connected to ourselves, to other people, and to the world around us. There are three figures here, standing together, but they are not really looking at one another. Each seems to occupy a slightly different inner space. For me, they are less like three individuals and more like three states of being—three different ways of experiencing the same world. Their faces are fragmented by light, color, and shadow. I often use the face this way in my paintings because I'm not interested in making a portrait of a particular person. I'm more interested in what exists under the visible face—the shifting, uncertain, and sometimes unknowable sense of who we are. The flowers, they suggest something very simple but profound: life keeps expressing and renewing itself. We change, we disappear, we leave something behind, and something else begins to emerge. I know, the orang/red landscape looks almost overwhelming. It can feel like the earth, but it can also feel like an emotional landscape—a kind of psychological ground that the figures are standing in. I wanted the color to carry some of the intensity that words cannot. So the three happinesses are not three possessions, and they are not three promises of a happy life. They are three moments of being alive—three fleeting forms of connection, awareness, and presence.

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