Lotus in the Gutter: Painting to Breathe

Lotus in the Gutter: Painting to Breathe

I have finished delivering my four paintings for the Small but Mighty exhibition at the Mills Pond House Gallery.

This time, as I handed over my work to the gallery, tears came to my eyes without warning. Inside, I also saw that one of my paintings from Imagination 25--Duality of the Mirror—had been sold.
The meaning of those tears… life is truly difficult. I feel tired. There are moments when everything feels like a mess, like I am on a roller coaster that never stops. Perhaps that’s why, when something good happens, I let myself feel joy fully. I also genuinely love hearing good news from others—because such things are true gifts.
In Buddhism, life itself is called a sea of suffering.
I agree with this to some extent. When you are in the midst of suffering, it can be so painful that it feels like you can’t breathe. At our house, people who are burdened by life’s hardships sometimes visit and share their stories. I listen, eat meals, drink tea with them, and hope that, for a moment at least, their pain might ease, even just a little.
It was during one of these difficult periods that I turned back to the cave paintings of Altamira. For nearly a year, I did almost nothing else—I painted a whole series about Altamira. I was searching for an answer: Does art have power when life feels unbearable?
Painting and writing, I realized, are like white lotus flowers blooming from the mud. Or like a ray of sunlight that somehow reaches into the dirtiest corner of the gutter. Sometimes that sunlight touches you, and you think, I can live a little longer because of this light.
If I had known that life itself was a gutter, perhaps I would not have wanted to live.
I often wonder while painting—why is art always so beautiful, when life is not? When life feels chaotic and ugly, why do the objects in my paintings look so beautiful—sometimes unbearably so? My Koi Fish series especially expresses how blessed and beautiful it is simply to be alive. They tell me: Life may be muddy, but it moves, it breathes, it shines. Keep living. It’s okay.
Their beauty moves me to tears.
I cried in the car today. Perhaps because I realized that my destiny is to paint lotus flowers that bloom in the gutter—to share hope, to offer warmth to others. To say, See, the sunlight reaches even here. Do you feel it? It’s warm, isn’t it? For this moment, it’s okay.
On the way back, I understood something with complete certainty: why the prehistoric people of Altamira painted such beautiful images.
Scholars will say they painted for religious, educational, or entertainment purposes.
But no—that’s not it.
They painted to live. They painted because they wanted to survive.
They painted so they could breathe.
Outside their cave was the terror of death, creeping into their shelter day after day. There was no religion, there was no civilization then, so they wouldn’t have known any gods either, no promise of tomorrow—only the fear of hunger and the loneliness of existence.
So they painted.
And when they looked at those paintings, they must have been astonished:
Why is my life such chaos, but my painting is so beautiful?
For that brief moment, they must have thought, At least this is beautiful. Thank goodness.
And they cried—just as I cried leaving the gallery today.
The next day, they must have painted again.
While they painted, the fear, anxiety, darkness, depression, and pain must have disappeared. And after finishing, when they looked upon their beautiful work, they must have felt the will to live again.
Today, I finally discovered the true meaning of art as a survival tool.
We must paint in order to live.
We must create in order to breathe.
Perhaps this was humanity’s very first salvation—our first artificial respirator.
When I was young, I went through many hardships. In those dark times, I used to watch the koi swimming in our home aquarium. Music, drawing, writing, and reading were all forbidden, but I could at least look at the fish. That was the only beautiful thing I had. The fish were so graceful, always moving—never still. Every movement was different, every moment alive.
Everything that moves is beautiful.
To be alive is the greatest blessing.
Whether in a decorated aquarium or a dirty gutter, movement itself is sacred.
And that—that—is art.

​A deeply personal reflection on the meaning of art as a form of survival. After delivering her works for the Small but Mighty exhibition, the artist contemplates the tears that came unbidden—tracing them back to the realization that humanity has always painted to live, to breathe, and to find beauty amidst suffering. Through memories of the Altamira cave painters and her own Koi Fish series, she discovers that art is not an ornament to life but a lifeline—like a white lotus blooming in the gutter.