Reborn to live

This painting began from a near-death experience. In Korea, Jang-noe-sam, or farmed wild ginseng, is considered an effective health food. I had a chance to eat some, and after having a bit I had become very sick. It felt as if my heart was about to explode. my breathing became heavier and heavier. I felt like dying, and being able to feel that, I collapsed shouting, “I don’t want to die..” It was moments later when I got my conscience back.

While it was only a few minutes of “death”; strangely, it completely changed how I view my life. Rising again from the state of ‘nothing’, felt like being born again. Like the Big Bang, my presence expanded as if a flower was blooming. Breaking the shell, and wavering up to live again was a pure shock. Such feeling, was something I’ve never felt before: a pure ‘life pleasure’. With this new start, it was as if my mind had erased all of the feelings that I had before, changing them into something else. The new me, as I’ve felt it, was beginning from an empty state.

It’s been a few years now, but every day I keep thinking about the experience and feel relieved, joyful and reborn: I’ve still not crossed into the realm of death; I’m still standing here where I feel I have things to do;

Just like the painting, I’m a person, breaking free from the dark. An image of life washing up to me like a wave, life embracing me brightly. This is a life that constantly reborns, an image of my brain that ceaselessly circulates from something to nothing.

Life itself is pleasure to man. Where that pleasure begins, my newly set brain exists. This is what I call ‘life pleasure & brain’.