Ahn was an active musician through almost his entire life. Music was one of his greatest passions along with his love of the ocean and naturally his love of painting. Playing numerous instruments with a high level of skill, Ahn recounts in his memoir waiting in line for hours among his schoolmates to have a single turn at the piano at 2AM, as working musical instruments could be hard to come by in the war-torn country. This passion for expression through music extended beyond piano to include clarinet and cello. In some rare figurative works, Ahn would even depict actual musicians playing these instruments.

Rhythm perhaps underscores Ahn’s engagement with the world: the rhythm of music, the rhythm of the ocean, the rhythm of painting. Integrating sheet music into his paintings was a natural exploration on the relationship.

This painting belongs to Young-Il Ahn's Water Series. For more than 30 years, Ahn has been attempting to capture the sea’s illusive, shimmering color and light in his paintings. The series grew out of a formative experience Ahn had in 1983, when he was lost at sea aboard a small fishing boat off the coast of Santa Monica. For a time, he was caught in fog so dense that he could not even see his own hands. When the fog cleared, sunlight illuminated the surface of the ocean surrounding Ahn for miles in every direction, leaving him with an indelible visual and emotional impression, which he has strived for decades to express in his Water paintings. In 2017, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) acquired part of this series and presented 10 of the works in the exhibition Unexpected Light: Works by Young Il Ahn, the first solo exhibition of a Korean American artist at LACMA.