I moved to Hong Kong to live and work in 2011 and stayed for 11 years without ever having the intention to be there that long. The paintings created from 2013 to 2017 were influenced by my environment. Hong Kong is vibrant, crowded, busy, and noisy, but one can also find solace in nature. I always like to introduce some personal aspects to my paintings, i.e. the choice of colours and a particular format of the painting surfaces and the materials. The longish vertical structure of the early paintings from the Changes series was based on traditional vertical wooden signage and Chinese scroll paintings. I wanted to introduce some of my cultural heritage in the work as a starting point. However, the work should not be seen as an abstract representation of a particular place or culture.

The paintings created in 2013 were more straightforward than those completed in 2014. They get smaller; at the same time, they are more intense and complex. This body of work is titled 'Changes', as the paintings changed from moment to moment, unpredictably as they were painted. The word Changes also refers to the Chinese divination book of I Ching, which I have read and practiced in the past.

However, from a painterly point of view, I think I was primarily concerned with what to do with colour, i.e. what colours to use and where they should go, how to apply the paint (hard edge vs free hand), what kind of tempos I wanted to create and why. I looked at Mondrian's work to see how he created weight, balance and pictorial space with a limited palette and a grid structure; how Kandinsky created flow, dynamics and rhythm in his work; the way Matisse used colours to create harmony; and of course, Albers' Interaction of Colour.

A grid is a great tool to construct a painting, although one might associate it with rigidness. However, I find it has a flexibility as new and repeated shapes can be created by simply subdividing a grid further to convey irregularities and reveal other hidden geometric schemes.

The choice of colours for these works, and for all my work, was derived from my memories of particular objects and places. Red, gold, salmon pink and jade were the typical colours I used in my earlier work as they are the distinctive colours of the Chinese culture and are everywhere in Hong Kong, where I grew up. To further expand the palette I would mix two colours, they could be two different hues of red, then add white or black. The painting process would often be: I put one colour down randomly and then repeat the same colour in alternate grids. That was the starting point of these paintings. Then I would respond to it as I went along, including subdividing the grids further as I saw fit. I used gradation and complementary colours in my work as I wanted to create different tempos and movements. I see these earlier works as a set of 'visual problems' I had deliberately created.