Ayumi Matsuba Riding A Wild Horse, 2024

Ayumi Matsuba is a Japanese artist who creates semi-abstract paintings centred around the theme of nature and landscape. She earned MFA from New York Academy of Art in 2010 with an emphasis in painting. Her paintings have been exhibited in New York, Miami, and London. Currently, she lives and works in Singapore.

I started this painting based on the view from the hospital window, where my daughter briefly stayed. The view included sky, some red-roof buildings, roads, and trees. It offered me solace during my anxious time. In the process of painting, the red-roof buildings started to make a bigger presence inside of the painting and appeared like a figure riding a horselike creature. I decided to title this painting "Riding a Wild Horse" as a metaphor of parenting, in that both requires patience and dealing with unpredictability.