Between 2015 and 2019, I dedicated myself to studying and practising my art. My days were simple—filled with studies punctuated by evening walks. Progress in my artistic quest was steady but slow, and my artistic career remained largely stagnant. Despite my efforts, I felt an intangible pressure, a sense of unease stemming from the uncertainty of whether my path was leading anywhere materialistically significant. I had so much yet to learn, and the surroundings of my social life were in a different direction.

The lake where I walked daily mirrored this internal transformation. It had changed dramatically over the years, as had the surrounding landscape of my locality. These changes, far from comforting, added to my anxiety. Friends and peers were leaving the country, moving abroad, seemingly thriving in their chosen paths. They were “progressing” in a confirmed way. The world around me buzzed with motion, ambition, and achievement. I longed to be away from all these—to retreat to a river, a mountain, far from this relentless push of ‘Chasing Dreams and Settled Life’.

Living in a metro city was bearable in my younger years when material pursuits still held some allure. But now, as a man in his forties focused on art and philosophy, the city seemed bustling. Its transience, conformity, and unrelenting pace all clashed with the life I lived internally. I could not reconcile myself to the external world and its pace nor accept the fleeting, ephemeral nature of everything around me.

It was during this time that I began reflecting deeply on Hokusai, an artist I admired more than as an Artist. He lived during the Edo period, a time of flourishing culture and thriving, yet he, too, grappled with the impermanence of life. His Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji were more than mere landscapes—prayers, invocations for an elixir of life, a way to transcend the temporal and longing to go beyond. I began my series as a dialogue with him, an ironic conversation across time and space.

Yet, as I worked, something shifted. What began as a conversation with Hokusai ended as a homage to Him and all he offered to me as a teacher.