Artist's Statement - Le Ha
“I’m not trying to tell a story. I’m listening to something as it unfolds.”
I don’t begin with a specific image. Often, I don’t know exactly where I’m going when I paint. I just know my hand needs to move, the color needs to be spread, and the surface needs to be touched.
While painting, there are moments when I pause—not to think, but to watch what the material is doing when I stop interfering. Layers settle, cracks form, something happens beyond my control. I never consciously thought of it as “the material revealing itself,” but perhaps I’ve been living with that very process without naming it.
I don’t paint to express something clear or defined. I paint as a way to remain in a wordless state—where intuition leads, and each trace becomes part of a silent conversation between myself and the material.
Sometimes the work becomes intense. Other times, it quiets down so much that nothing more needs to be said. I don’t try to explain what happens on the surface. I let it stay—unfinished, unspoken, but true.
In the Space Before Meaning
I don’t work with fixed images—I work with states yet to be named. My practice begins inwardly, guided by emotion and intuition rather than concept. Painting is a space where the unformed has permission to emerge. Though I use various materials, I’m not bound to any of them. The choice of medium results from sensing, not strategy. I’m interested in what moves from within: slow emotions, raw energies, and the silences that painting can hold. I don’t aim to complete an image. I aim to create a space where something might come into being—in ambiguity, in waiting, in dialogue.
Living With the Work
I paint to hold onto nameless moments—sensations that flicker in and out, subtle movements the eye can’t quite catch. My paintings don’t try to say something specific—but they offer a state of being: stillness, drift, or a soft shifting of energy. I don’t limit myself to one material. Sometimes I need the softness of ink, other times the weight of paint or a torn edge. I work as if listening—not imposing. Each painting is a quiet dialogue between myself and what has not yet taken form. When you live with a painting, you don’t just see colors and marks. You sense a space—where something still breathes, remains unfinished, and continues to hold a part of you inside it.