This series traces four seasons in my life —Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Thinking about the past, present, and future as a Chinese American woman making a home in New Mexico, this work unpacks my lived experience with fertility struggles. The work uncovers emotional landscapes as both intimate and ancestral, shaped by memory, migration, and mythology.
In Spring, Chinese New Year (or Spring Festival) falls on the New Moon marking the beginning of a new and optimistic year. Chinese people celebrate by wearing the most auspicious color Red while preparing two fish to eat. Served whole with head and tail, the double fish represents joy, abundance, marital harmony, prosperity, and fertility. Here, the fish are tightly bound by the fish’s bright red tongue, their bodies compressed and struggling for air. The imagery carries the promise of abundance while reflecting the emotional reality of loss and an uncertain future. The gaze extends toward New Mexico’s foothills, suspended between hope and mourning, meditation and migration.
Graphite Pencil on paper, 12 × 9 inches, 2026
Graphite pencil on paper, 12 × 9 inches, 2026
In Summer, the landscape centers on a porcelain gourd (húlu), a Chinese symbol deeply associated with fertility, generational continuity, and luck. The gourd is believed to contain a thousand seeds for a thousand healthy children. Within the vessel, a self portrait screams into the void of a hot, red, desolate landscape. The summer heat evokes uninhabitable spaces, dried riverbeds, and barren land, while New Mexico trout sense the uncertainty of their homes disappearing. This landscape bears the precarious, yet enduring weight of continuity.
Graphite pencil on paper, 12 × 9 inches, 2025
12 × 9 inches
Graphite pencil on paper
2026
Graphite pencil on paper
12 × 9 inches
2026
In Autumn, a family of hawks lived in the trees surrounding my home and became part of my daily life. As I watched them, I imagined the hawks as biblically accurate angels, predators with terrifying appearances, yet serving as protectors. Embedded in New Mexico, this biblically accurate hawk angel transforms the narrative into a spiritual symbol, guiding me through fear and loss, and grounding me in the present, the land, and the earth.
Graphite pencil on paper, 12 × 9 inches, 2025
Graphite Pencil on Paper, 12 × 9 inches, 2025
In Winter, a Giant Desert Centipede coils around my body. Its head dipped in red, it embodies a complex duality, both protective and poisonous, associated with healing yet also with danger. Its presence reflects the darker emotional terrain of the year, where resilience and vulnerability coexist. Flowers embedded in the skin carry the grief and mourning of a year of hope, while the eyes of ancestors watch over me as I persist. Cranes circle above, symbols in Chinese tradition of longevity and spiritual passage, guiding souls between worlds and suggesting continuity between past, present, and the unseen.
Graphite on Paper
12 × 9 inches
2026
Graphite Pencil on Paper, 12 × 9 inches, 2025
Graphite Pencil on Paper, 12 × 9 inches, 2025