When I was a student, my father once showed me a whimsical drawing he had casually sketched in pencil. It was a simple, cartoon-like figure with a face on a vegetable.

My father had no connection to art whatsoever, so I have never understood why he was able to draw such a charming little character so effortlessly. There was something unexpectedly amusing and endearing about his drawing, and I remember liking it very much.

Many years have passed since then, and my father is no longer with us. Yet, from time to time, I find myself remembering that little drawing.

Eventually, I began to wonder what it would be like to create something inspired by that distant memory—not to reproduce my father's drawing, but to take the playful spirit of it and transform it into something entirely my own.

That idea became the starting point for the **Whimsical Beings Series**: a collection of curious, playful, and sometimes delightfully odd characters born from imagination and memory.

I hope these whimsical beings bring a little joy and curiosity into your world.

I visited a sunflower farm in Thailand as a tourist. When I got close to a single flower, something stopped me. It was enormous — taller than a person, wild and unrefined. Like expecting a cat and meeting a tiger.

That presence became the starting point for this series of sunflower paintings. I love classical music, and one form has always delighted me: theme and variations, where the same melody returns again and again — transformed each time in rhythm, mood, and character, yet always recognizably itself. I wanted to try that with paint. One sunflower painting as the theme, six variations that each find a different way to express the same encounter.

I have kept tropical fish for a long time — pressing my face against the tank glass, watching them drift and float. The shimmer of their scales, the slow sway of their fins — there is something about them that feels, to a painter's eye, like watching a work of art in motion.

That fascination became the starting point for this series of ornamental fish paintings. As with classical theme and variations — where a melody is transformed again and again while keeping its essential character — I made one painting as the theme and six variations, each finding a different expression of the same subject.