Yachi grew up immersed in art because her father was a Chinese painter, and he ran an art gallery when she was a child. After graduating from high school, she went to Japan to study ceramics at Osaka University of the Arts, and then headed to New York to study graphic design at Parsons School of Design.
Yachi’s devotion to the study of Buddhism is related to her life experience. When she was nine years old, on an ordinary Sunday morning, her father passed away suddenly. This astonishing event made her ask questions about life and the world. In front of death, everything seemed meaningless.
The unexpected death of her father made Yachi feel very negative about life for a while, and it was not until she took a deep dive into Buddhism in 2009 that she saw the light at the end of the tunnel. Listening to teachings on renunciation, samsara, emptiness, and Buddha-nature allowed her to see a different landscape, and she began to face and work with her own life. For her, Buddhism is about more than healing. Healing the pain of this life is like bandaging a wound in a dream. The Dharma awakens people from the illusion of samsara, and this is the ultimate liberation.
Yachi did not paint for a long time, until 2018, when her life seemed to suddenly be pushed by the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, prompting her to pick up the brush and paint. At that time, Yachi was living in Hong Kong and created a series of watercolor illustrations of “Undercover Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.” Yachi wanted to express that Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are not so high up above us or distanced from us, but rather they are like undercover agents in our world, and just living a normal life around us. Under her warm brushstrokes, Shakyamuni Buddha turned into a pineapple merchant, Maitreya Bodhisattva turned into a photographer who often says “cheese,” and Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva is a firefighter rushing to rescue people from the fire.
In her paintings, Buddha images are displayed in the image of emptiness, and the unpainted parts of canvas become the shape of the Buddha. Yachi thinks that the Dharma needs to be more internalized, that the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas have always been a little vague in our hearts. She believes that they need to be felt and understood internally, which is the reason why she uses relatively simple lines to depict them and invoke their clear forms for us to connect with.
A worldwide network of buddhist practitioners studying and practising under the guidance of Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche.
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