Why I am drawn to gemstones
cannot be explained by the word “beautiful” alone.
Minerals born deep inside the Earth
over tens of thousands, even hundreds of millions of years.
Within those small crystals remain
traces of pressure, heat, light, and time—
everything the stone passed through before it was born.
When I look at a stone,
I sometimes feel something reaching toward me from deep within it.
Sensations before they become words.
A color,
a landscape,
a flash of light,
something like the memory of a place that exists nowhere.
I became a jewelry designer, too,
because I felt that a single stone was “speaking to me.”
Since then, rather than giving something to a stone,
I begin by looking at it closely.
Holding it up to the light.
Changing the angle.
Looking inside.
Spending some time together.
Then, a world that begins from that stone
gradually appears within me.
From mineral to landscape.
In my Artwork,
I translate that sensation into pictures.
Sometimes I draw the stone’s form as it is;
sometimes only a single color remains.
The crystal structure becomes lines,
inclusions become landscapes,
and reflected light may turn into entirely different colors.
Rather than deciding the finished form first,
I look at the stone and follow what emerges.
As I draw,
things I could not see at first
rise up on the canvas.
I love that moment.
Looking at stones the way I listen to sound.
Come to think of it,
when I work with crystal bowls,
I do something very similar.
Listening to one sound.
Listening to the overtones within it.
Listening to the resonance that appears only
when it overlaps with another sound.
When I look at a stone, too,
my awareness moves from the surface color into its depths.
Light.
Layers.
Crystals.
Inclusions.
And what I myself am feeling from that stone.
Looking at stones the way I listen to sound.
Listening to sound the way I look at stones.
Within me,
these two lie very close together.
EARTH / LIGHT / MEMORY
Minerals are
forms the Earth has sculpted over a long, long time.
Light enters them,
and a human being—me—meets them.
Perhaps what I draw
is what is born in that “in-between.”
Is it the memory of the stone?
My own memory?
Or a landscape with no name yet, born in that moment?
Rather than deciding on an answer,
I want to keep gazing at what appears.
From the small universe of a gemstone,
opening a world never seen before.
That is my Artwork.