Hometown of No Return

Creating a painting with the theme of my hometown from memory has been a fervent hope of mine for years. Being a middle-aged man, the yearning for my hometown is less about a physical return, but more about an emotional refuge. The German philosopher Novalis once said, "Philosophy is really homesickness, the urge to be everywhere at home." In one's consciousness, the hometown is never just a name or symbol, but a spiritual homeland composed of many specific landscapes, scenes, people, and stories; a sanctuary of the soul, endowed with numerous emotions and memories. Deep in the heart of every wanderer, there lies a cherished affection for the hometown; and each person's nostalgia endows their hometown with different poetic and picturesque sentiments due to various life experiences. "To keep nostalgia in mind" allows the wandering heart to settle with a trace of warmth and gives the lonely soul a place to confide. For me, creating this work is destined to be a spiritual feast unbearable to look back upon. Where the heart rests, there is my hometown. The affection for one's native land is something ingrained in the bones and blood, a journey of the heart intertwined with our childhood, a deep breath embedded in the soul; and it is the hometown of childhood that provides us with the greatest refuge for emotional devotions throughout our life. The mundane world vast, affairs of life bleak, how can one bear to exchange the floating life for the fleeting time. Instead of depicting the childhood memories, creating the "Hometown of No Return" is much more like fulfilling a distant dream that no longer exists.