Nature, Painting, Me_Lee In Seob
For Lee inseob, whose longing for a perfect world is felt more intensely than most, nature is a quiet force in the soul and a powerful way of being. An eternal life principle that guides him, nature is not an abstraction, but his logical framework and thought process that helps him achieve the feat of finding rhythm and rhyme in his canvases and seeing beyond their simple essence.
Nature, Painting, Me_ Lee In Seob
I hate being bound by anything. Restraint, limit, force, order... I seem to have an innate dislike for the constraint that seems to echo in these words. This is probably why I started drawing at an early age. After decades of painting, even in my own paintings, I try not to be constrained. I try to let my brush flow and let the emotions of the moment unfold freely.
I was born in Busan and grew up in Seoul. My parents are from North Korea, so if you ask me where my hometown is, I can only say Seoul. The crowds of people and cars, the incongruous concrete structures, and the ever-increasing apartment buildings all scream 'Seoul' to me. The reason I left Seoul as soon as I could and wandered around the mountains and fields of the country was probably because I wanted to find the home of my heart. (To perhaps resort to an overused homonym I was searching for my “soul’)
While searching for it, I intuitively recognized Eoseongjeon. It was the kind of hometown I wanted to feel, like a warm and cozy place where I could make a nest. Eoseongjeon, Gangwon- do, became my second home.
While searching for it, I intuitively recognized Eoseongjeon. It was the kind of hometown I wanted to feel, like a warm and cozy place where I could make a nest. Eoseongjeon, Gangwon- do, became my second home.
It was originally a Hwajeonmin village. There are still not many people in the steep mountainside and wide fields, so there are no artificial sounds. It is so quiet and secluded that you can even hear the bursting of flowers on the branches. Birds searching for mates with their urgent calls, wild sheep dozing in the sun, and chicks following their mothers under the bushes are the main characters of the landscape. This temple, where my studio is located, is the birthplace of my paintings and the first and last love of my heart. The four seasons in Eoseongjeon are completely different from the four seasons in the big city.
Spring, with its light green color that gradually deepens in the faint warmth, summer, which is hot but has a coolness in it, autumn, which seems to express all the colors of the world at once, and winter, which is covered with white snow that seems to tell us to let go of all the colors, greed, and miseries of life. (Perhaps in its sparse darkness renewal is inherent)
I came here only to discover that I am quite sensitive to the seasons, and I also found out when living here that the time to each of these seasons find their way into my canvases.
If I had to choose one of them, it would be spring. I've been working for decades, so I tend to do the groundwork in the winter, and in the spring, when things start to come alive, I put my brush to canvas with renewed vigor.
Of course, the other seasons are not without their inspiration. Sometimes I release the feelings and deep emotions of winter in the heat of summer, sometimes I capture the feelings of spring in fall canvases, and sometimes I release the feelings of summer in spring. There is a continuum to nature. If you wait … and watch long enough you can sense a law of perfect and suggested opposites and contrasts.
Nature creeps into me without my realizing it, ferments alone, concentrates alone, and at some point runs to the tip of my brush. Still, I wait for spring. Ducks swimming lazily in the water, puppies, cats, chickens playing in the yard... I invite these familiar creatures to sit with me on the canvas of a blossoming spring.
With the rigor of composition, the chaos of non-composition, the anger and darkness of inexplicability, I went through my younger days. Now those around me look at my paintings and say, "It's warmer. 'It's softer and brighter,' they say. I love hearing that. If the warmth and beauty of nature that I feel can be captured on canvas and conveyed to the viewer, I am satisfied. Of course, Mother Nature, who resembles my parents, is not only warm and bright in her embrace.
Mother Nature has a solemn command to rise again and again, dozens of times, hundreds of times, through pain, suffering, and countless setbacks and trials that no one else would have to go through. It's a command from a master who gave me life and will one day take it back."If you're alive, get up!"So it is with our lives.
As I stare at the roaring fire in the center of the workshop, I recall a poem by Han Yong-woon.
"Burning ashes become oil again." Wood becomes fire, then soil, then iron, then water... Even if we don't mention the five elements, we live with the idea of the beginning and end of all life. All living things die. They die and return to earth, dust, and ashes.
I make good use of ash as a pigment in my paintings. With paint mixed with ash, I paint flowering trees, tangled bushes, creatures burrowing beneath them, and birds soaring in the sky. Out of ash bloom petals, out of ash grow trees, out of ash comes the ground we walk on.
Strangely, when I use ash, I often get the color I want, the perfect color I didn't even know I wanted. The joy and elation of those moments makes my heart swell.
I collect the ashes from the hearth and put them in bags. One bag, two bags, three bags. As I look at the heavy pile, I am filled with renewed hope. The expectation that they will complete my paintings, the fantasy that my paintings I have not yet seen are lined up with them.
My work has no particular intention. Just like nature does. A tree standing in a field doesn't grow in a planned way. Over the years, some branches fall off, others stay alive, bending and breaking. I paint spontaneously. I want my paintings to be loosely written essays, not precise novels or concentrated poetry. I want to capture the ever-changing feelings of nature, its emotions, on my canvas.
I want to capture the ever-changing feelings of nature, its emotions, on my canvas. I want to create paintings where the colors blend together naturally, where they open up on the palette and unfold without me knowing.
I am a painter. I paint my paintings and they are me.
