Generally, Eastern painting focuses on the spirits and meanings in things, rather than on their appearances. What Eastern painting, particularly ink painting, finds important in figuring out the naturalness of an object sufficiently and precisely is n...
Generally, Eastern painting focuses on the spirits and meanings in things, rather than on their appearances. What Eastern painting, particularly ink painting, finds important in figuring out the naturalness of an object sufficiently and precisely is not simple description of its appearance, but the origin yielding the appearance. This exploration of origin is expressed as blank space, and its emptiness follows the principle of energy which is the origin of all things in nature. Thus, grafting into Western painting the concept of blankness related to the spirituality of Eastern painting has a philosophical significance that highlights the meaning of my work. This attempt and study on my work that emphasizes Eastern spirituality along with the technicality of Western painting stresses the significance of expecting the rightful manifestation of Eastern spirituality by the techniques of Western painting. This is consistent with my position that pursues the permeation of Eastern spirits of its own into painting works, beyond the present condition of emphasizing the forms of Western painting.
Spatial expression by blankness begins with the meaning of an artist's creation as in general paintings. Expressions as an artwork are various in their forms and content according to the artist's position, but the most important is that creativity should be at the center. Blank space differs from the background or space of Western painting, but as everyone knows, it belongs to the area of painting that follows an artist's sensibilities.
Western painting's thinking about blank and background as the space for painting works strives on objects for the ways of representation and expression, and the meaning of the expressed itself. For Eastern painting, in contrast, the objects are overcome through the artist's reasoning, and expressed by the internal sensibility. The matter of blankness in my work is also expressed with emphasizing the spiritual side of Eastern painting, rather than the formal side of Western painting. The blankness in my works is to express being, and used as a way of making figures or images look better. This way of expression is revealed as the space of the internal sensibility: as some of nature is borrowed into the work, a sense of unity is made between the space arising in the mind and the space as a representation of nature.
To describe background as the main space to express the internal sensibility in my works, the relationship between my works and the concept of blankness shown in Eastern painting was firstly explained. Through this explanation constructing the understandings on my prior works to the recent ones, the study set out to approach landscape paintings around the time when expression of internal sensibility began. The early works are the sensible expression that omitted some part in natural representation or hided it with the spread effect of colors. In expressing natural things, a sensibility of the whole nature is discovered from a tiny part of nature and led to the exploration of the spiritual origin. This means that through the case that expression itself rather played as an obstacle to sensibility, the relationships between being and non-being, between my own spirit and natural things were formulated. The blank space of natural landscape appearing in my works is a part of representation. The represented part of nature not only expresses the whole of nature, but is an important encounter that informs the mode of living and the origin of reasoning. It is the space to express the mental origin and sensibility one cannot see with eyes, rather than understanding the blank space logically.
As above, the study based on my works suggested that the concept of Eastern spirit in painting works is in the pursuit of harmony with things. Also, it ensured the possibility of seeking the origins of materiality and spirituality by harmonizing my work with the meaning of Eastern spirit.