Abundance
Abundance is a watercolor series derived from Four Seasons Chongming, an ongoing illustrated essay collection developed from a three-year field research project in rural China between 2020 and 2023. Living as both an artist and a farmer, I practiced a self-sustaining organic lifestyle while documenting local agricultural knowledge, food culture, and everyday rural life.
Supported and recognized by the local government for its cultural contribution to rural communities, Four Seasons Chongming combines writing, field research, and more than one hundred watercolor illustrations painted from direct observation of locally grown crops. Blending recipes, rural anecdotes, personal reflections, and visual documentation, the project explores the relationship between culture and nature, human-made systems and natural systems, while celebrating the restorative abundance of the female body and the wisdom embedded within the land.
The paintings in Abundance are drawn directly from this experience. Depicting seasonal fruits, vegetables, herbs, and edible plants cultivated during the project, the series serves as both a visual archive and a celebration of the profound connection between nourishment, land, community, and vitality.
One summer evening, after an early dinner, my father and I took a walk along the riverbank. As we passed a small farmhouse, we stopped to chat with an elderly farmer. She pointed to a large field of edamame and told us about a puzzle she could not solve for weeks. Most of the plants were thriving, yet a small patch directly beneath the streetlight was stunted and barely growing.
“Because they couldn’t sleep under the light during the night,” I said to the elderly farmer.
— Excerpt from Four Seasons Chongming manuscript.