Living in Jeju — In the Artist's Words

Whenever I paint the sea, many thoughts take hold of me. From the moment I face the canvas, they return in an endless repetition. What moves within me as I work is not only a matter of composition, beauty, or the limited satisfaction of an aesthetic act. When my affection for Jeju joins imagination, it becomes the love and longing for our homeland that all of us share. I ask what homeland means to me. In that question are acceptance, denial, and even the letting go of desire. I compare old Jeju with today's Jeju, and always think: Jeju belongs to Jeju. Its beauty lies in its Jeju-ness. Perhaps painting is my way of finding beauty here and confirming my own existence.

Anyone in Jeju may feel it: the sun seems close, and the sea flashes with light. The subtropical scenery is vivid; plants are bright and saturated. The waves sound like the pulse of eternal life. From the harbor, the horizon raises boundless dreams. One feels again that man can never overcome great nature. Then sorrow and pain gather in passionate touches, rising on the canvas as infinite dreams, fading and rising again. This may be my honest self, wandering in search of myself, of nature, and of my dream.

With age, one lives in memory. Faint childhood scenes return: a crow on the thatched roof meant guests or news; after ancestral rites, food was scattered on the roof for crows; I crossed the stream to school, feared old tales in the grass fields, played with piglets in the sty, and once killed one by accident, leaving my parents too stunned to scold me. I rode an unsaddled pony to my grandfather's house, rubbed my skin raw, and had cat hair applied instead of medicine. Looking back, it was a simple life in nature, untouched by modern civilization. Seeing my homeland turn into a developed tourist site, I miss that childhood with regret.

Summer is a creative season with two faces, vigorous and peaceful. Around Seogwipo, subtropical plants, Jeongbang Falls, and the great sound of water form a scene beautiful, solemn, and cool. It is not a human-made cultural landscape but primitive nature. Here lies Jeju's beauty. When summer deepens, many seek mountains and seas, yet often they meet secondary nature, not nature itself. It is fortunate that Jeju has not yet been destroyed. Coastal thatched houses seem to embody Jeju's mood; elders talking under old trees look peaceful. The horizon gives infinite dreams, while distant waves suggest vast life. Seen from many angles, reefs become fantasy and symbols of sharp sensation. Their changing curves are mysterious; they offer silent conversation, making one forget time and pain. Jeju's beauty is natural beauty. It makes man think of himself. As the seasons change, expression on canvas also changes.

As time passes, my surroundings keep changing. Each time, I go alone to the childhood homeland left in memory. Painting places not yet erased, I came to favor thatched roofs bound with thick ropes, seaside huts and crumbling stone walls battered by storms, ponies, and crows on stone walls. They remain living records of our old homeland. Jeju, land of legends, gives a native beauty found nowhere else. This is the character of native art, and Jeju's local beauty cannot be confined to one frame.

What draws me is not a modern city, but the rural affection found nowhere else: Hallasan's feminine curves, black seaside rocks, thick thatched roofs that endured fierce winds, grazing ponies. When I was born, this island was pure nature. I lived within an aesthetic sense that felt Jeju's own beauty before modern aesthetics. It saddens me that such beauty is being forgotten, yet culture develops and islanders' lives improve. If culture grows by accepting things from elsewhere, should we not see Jeju's own customs and beauty clearly, and fuse them with modern beauty? Each summer I return to childhood nights: splashing in the stream by day, falling asleep to my sister's old stories by night.

Jeju's beauty is natural beauty. It makes man think of himself. As spring, summer, autumn, and winter alter what one sees and feels, the canvas also takes many forms. For the painter, wonder before nature becomes the impulse to create. Every painter begins with pure nature and reaches artistic nature through the work. Jeju's charm is a pure, simple, deep nostalgia for the primitive. The sea's life force is the source of my creation, and nature's life is our infinite, eternal dream. What is allowed to me is to live quietly in nature, be moved by it, think, and make forms.

People today hold many different views on contemporary art. Yet beneath this diversity, there seems to be something they share in common. Perhaps this is because art is rooted in human nature. At the same time, when nation, era, and climatic conditions differ, the manner of expression differs too. Since ancient times, Eastern peoples have not viewed nature as opposed to humanity, but have seen humanity as placed within nature's providence. Not resisting nature's course but adapting to it, nature and humanity have come to merge and assimilate with one another. In particular, painting in the East is especially characterized by expressions that take nature as their subject.

Accordingly, its methods of expression differ greatly from those of the West. The Western attitude toward nature may be understood as one that has leaned more toward conquering and utilizing it. In this respect, it differs profoundly from the Eastern view. Eastern art begins from adaptation to nature; it arises from a state of mind filled with infinite love for nature and deep gratitude toward it. This is not merely a simple or shallow assertion of human feeling, but an expression of a noble spirit in accordance with the order of the universe. Western artists often attempt to subordinate nature intentionally to human beings and then represent it in art. Eastern artists, even when taking human beings as their subject, often depict them together with landscapes, flowers, and birds. This is precisely the distinctiveness of Eastern art, and it shows that the source of artistic creation differs from that of the West.

Seen from this point, the natural scenery of our country is exactly like a Southern-school (namhwa) painting. The natural environment expressed in this namhwa style, though shared within the East, cannot be found in a climate such as Japan's, and may be called uniquely Korean. This namhwa style crossed over to Japan as well, but it never truly took root there. This was because Japan's natural environment was far removed from the landscapes of namhwa, and in the end, styles of Japanese painting centered on the human figure — such as ukiyo-e — took shape instead. Much else that crossed from our country failed to take root as it was, since the pungto differed, and instead formed its own new style. In this way, when the pungto differs, the style of art differs too.