A Single Dot
When nothing more can be removed, one dot remains. The emptiest place becomes the fullest.
Rite to the Sea God
The prayer goes to the deity, while the heart goes to the boat. A single rite binds those who leave and those who remain.
The Cliff's Edge
To paint dried-grass colour is to call Jeju into the work. Colour reveals fūdo rather than covering scenery.
The Beggar
The wind calls him a beggar, yet he is one who has passed through wind and cloud, light because he owns and risks little.
Living Alone
Living alone is not severance from the world, but a place of dwelling deeply with oneself.
Mount Sanbang
Form emerges through endurance; it is the mark left by endured time.
Absorption
After distance, withdrawal, and emptiness, peace was the light settling upon one unoccupied patch of earth.
The Departing Boat
A person no larger than a dot governs the image; the smaller the dot, the deeper the solitude.
The Path Rejoined
The line thins almost to breaking, then joins again. An entire life can enter a single line.
Moonlit Night
The moon lights the night as though unable to look directly. Sorrow does not disappear when the eyes are covered.
Autumn at Aeryeonjeong
Splendour is put down one colour at a time. Only one who possessed abundance could choose to relinquish it.
Changdeokgung Palace
The work stands at a passage from academic representation to fūdo, from form toward existential posture.
Self-Portrait
Between the place left behind and the place not yet reached, the young painter establishes himself through the brush.
The Sea Is the Haenyeo's Tears
Faded colour is not empty. To look for a long time is to discover an old cry within it.
Haenyeo
Depth does not come from darkness alone, but from long endurance and weathering.
The Sea Is the Haenyeo's Tears
The blue sea endures until it fades yellow. The sea becomes the tears of the haenyeo.
Plowing
Dried-grass colour is the living colour that remains after life has endured for a long time.
Mother and Fish
The horizon is the distance between mother and father: unreachable, yet unbroken.
Oreum
The summit is not a place to remain. An ascent is completed by descent.
Sea Village
A sea village is where sea and land divide the work of sustaining life.
Sea Village
The departing boat and remaining house bind maritime and terrestrial life within one fūdo.
Sea Village
One can leave because someone remains; one can return because someone keeps the place.
Thatched House by the Shore
Waiting is the refusal of those who have companions to forget the one left alone at sea.
The Sea of Jeju
Everything on the rise inclines toward the others. It is a warm place to which the distant boat may return.
Landscape with an Ox
This is not an abandoned house, only a house briefly unoccupied: an ordinary noon without departure or farewell.