When I paint pictures, I always ask myself, "What, in essence, is a painting?" In order to firmly grasp the essence of each painting as I create it, I first try to expel from my mind any mental image I have based on my own worldview, and instead borrow an image conjured up by someone else. However, when I paint a work based closely on another person's image in this way, I cannot completely eliminate myself from the final piece when transferring the idea to canvas—a lingering hint of my presence remains. Each of these works is akin to a reflection of myself onto another person's idea, as if I'm standing there right next to them, or perhaps projected directly atop them somehow. A recent experiment of mine has been to go and view framed artwork in museums, and then depict these—both painting and frame—on my own canvas. Many old paintings in art museums are framed, yet most of us focus on viewing just the painting itself, mentally blocking out the frame as we do so. Why is that? The frame is physically attached to the painting itself, yet it is not treated as part of the artwork—we often pretend it's simply not there. What gives rise to this disparity between how artwork is perceived and the physical reality of its existence? These are the various phenomena I explored when creating my pieces for this exhibition. As a personality trait, I tend to just take action first and come up with verbal explanations after the fact, so the things I say may not be wholly accurate. In essence, I want to convey that, for this exhibition's showings, I've tried to create paintings and their frames together as integrated works of art.