Painter's Monologue

I am a painter. But for a long time I did not know well what kind of painter I was. In Tokyo I learned to paint. In Seoul I learned form. How to hold a line, how to anchor a composition, how to end without collapse — these I learned. But coming to the island I understood: what I had learned was too upright, too rigid, too eager to be finished. The wind would not allow it. My lines began to lean. My forms began to loosen. At first I thought it was failure. Later I understood. What had collapsed was not the painting. It was my habit. I did not paint this island. I painted the posture by which I was slowly changed before this island.

In Tokyo I learned lines. Straight lines. Lines that held. Lines that went all the way without collapse. That, I was taught, was good painting. The teacher said: fix the form. That is the skeleton of a painting. I learned well. My paintings became precise. The compositions did not waver. But no matter how I looked at them, those paintings did not breathe. I thought it was a matter of skill. I needed to paint better. Coming to the island I understood. Skill was not the problem. The lines were not alive. That was the problem.

Before I came I hesitated, long. It could not be called a decision. When I could no longer paint in Seoul, I needed somewhere to go. I did not choose the island. The island was what remained. Stepping off the boat I did not know what I would become here. Whether I had come to begin again as a painter, or to set the painter aside for a little while. Not knowing that was perhaps the only honest beginning.

The first night I could not sleep. Not because the dark was unfamiliar. Because it was quiet. In Seoul there had been so much noise. Inside that noise, what I could not do I could not clearly hear. Here I could hear it. A person who fears lifting a brush was lying here. I stared at the ceiling for a long time. My hands came to mind. Not what should I paint with these hands — but can these hands still paint. That came first. That was the first question I asked on this island.

One day I touched the earth. I had many paints, but what held my hand was not a color with a name. It was the color of soil that had met the wind for a long time, bleached in the sun, dried through years. I could not call it yellow. Ochre came close but fell a little short. It was nearer to the color of dried grass. Then I understood. What I had been searching for was not a color to startle the eye but the color that remains after surviving.

At first I thought the crow was just a black bird. Always visible. Too common. Not worth looking at for long. But on this island, what is always visible tends in the end to last the longest. The crow sat on a stone wall and remained calm even in strong wind. For a time I passed it by. Then I understood: that blackness resembled the blackness of ink. Not a color to stand out but the color that remains after long looking. After that I looked at the crow again.

For a time I painted like a person who had lost speech. The canvas was there. The brush was there. But no matter how I drew, the lines were not mine. The lines learned in Tokyo were too neat. The compositions learned in Seoul were too familiar. They were not wrong. Only — they could not breathe here. One night I threw the brush. It struck the wall and fell quietly to the floor. That quiet shook me more than the anger. Even rage would not do as I wished. For a time I did not pick the brush up. Left it on the floor. The wind of Jeju does not leave straight lines long. For a long while I thought this was incompleteness. But the more I thought so, the more the painting died. Then I understood: what I needed was not new technique but a new language. Language cannot be learned. Only after losing everything one already has does space open for something else to enter.

Watching the haenyeo I first tried to paint them. I tried to catch the lines of the body. I tried to find the color of the sea. I tried to compose. That was what I knew as the work of painting. But when they descended into the water, only the surface remained. I looked at that surface for a long time. A surface with nothing on it. Yet I could not lift the brush. The sea without her was closer to her than the sea with her. Then I understood: there was something I had long misread. Painting is not the act of transferring what is visible. It is the act of leaving what is not visible. The haenyeo did not teach me painting. She returned to me what I had been leaving out.

Climbing the oreum, words fell away. On the way up I had no breath for speech. At the summit there was no reason to speak. On the oreum I several times painted nothing at all. At first I thought this was wasted time. But standing long enough I came to understand: some landscapes the eye must learn before the hand. The way near and far things continue like a single breath could not be hurried into paint. The oreum did not teach me landscape. It taught me how to stay.

I lived long in the studio. It was my home. It was the sea. It was the oreum. Without going out, everything was inside it. Ochre walls. The smell of dried paint. Unfinished canvases. Paintings I had not yet understood. I did not throw them away. To throw something away meant I still did not know it. One day I would know: ah, this is what I was trying to do then. At those moments I understood: painting is not something I do alone — it is something I do together with time. The studio was not a place where I was alone. It was a place where I was together with time.

Even after finding ochre something was still missing. Ochre was warm, broad, holding inside it old time. But with that alone, the silence of the canvas could not hold to the end. That was when ink came back into my hands. That blackness was not merely a dark color. It was the weight of night, the silence of basalt, something like the bone of things that do not speak. When ink was placed over ochre, the canvas at last found the strength to hold. Then I understood: if ochre is breath, ink is bone.

At first I missed people. I needed someone to show paintings to. Whether things were going well or not I could not tell alone. But as time passed, that need gradually lessened. Not lessened — changed into something else. Instead of another person's eye, my own hand's sense began to speak first. Whether this line is alive. Whether this color belongs in this place. I cannot explain it, but the hand knew before I did. I do not think this was something solitude gave me. When the other person's eye was gone, my own eye at last began its work. That was all.

In one year I could not paint. The brush was there. The canvas was there. But my hand would not go. I knew by then that if forced, a painting dies. So I waited. It was a strange thing. Waiting was harder than painting. Understanding that doing nothing is not the same as being incapable — that too took a long time. The island did not change in that time. The wind blew in that time. The ochre sky burned every evening in that time. These things taught me: waiting is not emptiness. It is what accumulates without being seen.

Some time sinks before language can reach it. Beneath the soil of this island there is memory that cannot easily be brought up, and the sea sometimes pushes it silently to the surface. For a long time I could not face it directly. To speak of it was to make it too easily explained. To explain it was to push it further away. Some things become false the moment they are explained. So one day I painted the black sea. I did nothing else. I only applied black in layers, waiting for each to dry before putting black over it again. That blackness was not only the color of night. It was the color of things that had passed and yet would not pass. The color of things that would disappear if given a name. I left behind the darkness. I left behind the waves. I left behind the weight of time that could not be spoken. There is the word testimony. But what I did was smaller than that, and longer-lasting. Whether that was enough I still do not know. Only that this was what I could do.

Growing old was not something that came all at once. On one day the knees knew first. On another day the hands knew first. On another day the eyes. It became hard to stand long, as before. Hard to draw with force. But strangely, the more that was so, the more clearly something else appeared: not what more shall I paint but what must I not miss, to the end. Until the last I tried not to paint well but to leave honestly. If the hand trembled, I let it tremble. If the line weakened, I let it weaken. And one day I put the brush down and looked at it for a long time. The room was quiet. I thought: that quiet is enough.

I think about what remains after a person has gone. A name remains. Work remains. A few records may remain. But before all of those, something else remains. Posture. I believe that how one endured and lived outlasts what one achieved. What remains in my paintings was not what I chose. The ochre stayed not because it was beautiful but because I could find no other color. The slanted lines remained not because I intended them but because straight lines could not hold long on this island. These things were not choices. They were what was left. And I came to understand, later, that what was left was closer to me than what I had chosen. When I first came to this island I tried to paint it. After a long time I understood: what I painted was not only the island but the posture of myself changing before the island. But what that posture is I was never able to say fully in words. I think that is right. What can be said fully in words is already not a painting.