My inspiration for this artwork was Dancing Mutants (1965) painted by Hernando R. Ocampo. Hernando was a Filipino National Artist in the visual arts, a fictionist, a playwright and an editor. He lived from 1911 to 1978, through WW2. His painting represents his reactions to the horrors of war, after he was inspired by a film showing mutated creatures from the after-effects a nuclear bomb. The painting is made up of red and green shapes of different shades and sizes. The green shapes resemble leaves or perhaps fish, if you look closely enough you might be able to see the figure of a fleeing human. 

I chose the number 0 for my stencil cut because I wanted to leave the meaning open to the viewer as 0 represents totality, both nothing and everything at the same time. I’d like the viewer to imagine and choose the meaning of this painting, similar to my inspiration.

My composition for this art piece started off as just a circular pond with two koi fish circling each other, later I decided to make the pond an irregular but curvy shape. I also decided to add rocks and bushes, for a more “pond-ish” look and feel. I used the fish idea because the green shapes in Dancing Mutants to me resembled fish. The salmon pink hexagons you can see at the bottom of the pond are supposed to be more angular versions of the red shapes in Dancing Mutants, in my painting I use them as pebbles at the bottom of the pond. The Japanese characters you can spot in the top middle part of the painting means koi or carp because koi originated from Japan.

For the background I used a wash of sky blue and for the pond I used shades of turquoise. I used a watered down dark blue colour for the outline of the pond to make it stand out. For the 0, I cut a stencil and used a dry-brush technique that to create the painted number.

This painting has a slight personal reference to a real-life experience. I decided to choose koi because I went to Japan when I was 4 or 5, and koi is a very strong connection to Japan.