Artist Hyeja Moon on 23th January, 2011

Essays on my paintings

“Breathing Canvas”

*The brush work passing on the canvas could be called a kind of performance that makes me more concentrating on my mind.  I use my brush work to draw a figure but rather place an emphasis on the brush work itself.  The under-painting is done with yellow color close to sunlight tinged with violet, and drawings on it with complementary color, purple.  Then, the drawing lines are respected to the final touch.  The first layer of yellow color narrowly left next to the drawn lines is the place where my painting is breathing as light beams through holes in the curtain.  I mainly paint up the space with a finest brush (#0) as rapidly as I could concentrate, when I am pleased indeed.  I let you in the secret that I paint a large canvas with a finest brush as well.  Is it so delightful that you could enjoy the traces of the brush strokes viewed at close range as you do from a distance?

*Secondly, it is another pleasure of mine that I scratch the thick colors on the canvas with a sharp graver.  At this moment, I become braver and gain in strength.  I, who have long sculpted, am acquainted with a graver and able to handle it freely.  On the basis of color theory, I always use complementary colors in the vicinity of a color sometimes producing bright or melancholy mood, but generally I paint colors in accordance with the spring of May or the music I listen to.  I try to make the colors clear keeping complementary color theory in mind.  I feel my work as the harmonious tones of each musical instrument in the concert of orchestra.

*My paintings are hardly heavy.  There is a pleasant and vigorous energy in them instead.  I would like to show my positive way of life through my paintings.  Musical sound is not as familiar as the sound of Mother Nature.  Nonetheless, the great music offers a kind of emotional sensation unlike natural sounds.  Especially, the post-rock music that I recently use as a theme during my art work enables me to keep ahead.  I listen to and re-interpret the music that is played with electronic instruments and strings in an orchestra at the same time.  I construct the world of my own covering the abstract and the concrete art, which may be coincided with the modern painting that an individual skill of an artist refers to a sub-genre of an art.  I represent the feeling through my paintings when I listen to the contemporary music that leads me ahead.

*I draw a picture that looks rumpled naturally but incubates graceful tension or passion of life.  Afterimages of Korean shaman dance could be found at the base of my mind.  In my childhood the images of a dancing shaman in a colorful shaman costume who was fallen into a trance still occupies my mind.  One could easily find some common ground between contemporary music and Korean shamanism music.  Above all, the impromptu performances and the sensations that the two kinds of music derive from the dissonances are not far from each other.  

A dancing posture drawn accordingly to the theme of music is my favorite object in my paintings.  A figure of a dancing girl means a flow of music.  My paintings are concerts sensed by eyes.  I am able to visualize any music.  The waves and floating musical notes around the sides of the canvas supporting central screen, which may be considered as indicators to understand my paintings, decorate the space as design elements.  I seek to present elements that are of picture and of design as well.  Some of my details are partially two dimensional and others three dimensional.  I ponder on the way of putting them together into a frame.  It is the very tiring moment for the work.  

I bring up my concentration through daily yoga and meditation.  Thanks to such repetitive drill I could put up with listening single album for several months again and again without losing insight. I feel charmed by narrow linear spaces where the canvas breaths like the umbilical cord carrying oxygen from Mother to the baby.

                                      Hye-Ja Moon on the 1st of January, 2011

Music for Enchanted Landscape Escape(0915) *As descriptive nature and things in the music are far from the real, I describe such fantasy by floating images.  I represent imaginary situation escaping from the real: Withered roses, scattered petals, a woman lying under the rainbow, an insensible hand, a trace of a ghost in an empty room, a ringing telephone, a flock of sheep fallen asleep, an old rotten wheelchair without the owner, the Sun with no reflection on the sea. Among them the sleeping sheep is a relaxed moment of meditation.  The drawing of fish, a symbol of life, put the issues of the screen together.  Waving lines at the sides imply a blank sheet of music paper, and the floating musical notes are decorative and visualize the music.  I respect the principle of three: one issue occupies three spaces in all directions.

Music for Dream’s end Come True(1001) *I described the situation that the dreams I had felt while listening to the music came to be true.  There is a rainbow in the sky, and people are making a brisk walk between full-blown flower beds. It is a parade for their dreams.  In the rectangular shape in the center of the canvas there are colorful stars in the pastel sky over the deep valley.  Dreams look like to be near.  My mind is also in full bloom.  The fine curving line binds different fragments into one on the canvas.  The floating musical notes around the curving line are a transmitter of the music and a means of decoration as well.  An overall hue is soothing and spring-bright.  

Music for Mass Murder Refrain(1001) * I expressed the feeling while listening to the music by drawing hungry hands and dancing girls that represent the heart of a truth seeker praying for the moment of death and hope.  The white flowers are dandelions that remind us of grief.  The die hanging in the air seems to have a sec.ret.  The blooms of the oriental orchids flutter about.  The pale pink oriental orchids are vigorous, but     Beautifully slight.  The fantasy of righteous death is paralleled to the regret of the mass murder in a way of sensation that the music evokes.  Winding lines around the picture offer heavy melancholy.  The dark background is decorated with numerous dots which break the monotony in general.  The silent pray and the regret of mass murder is portrayed on the canvas more beautifully than in the music.

Music for Hymn to The immortal

*The endless noise of wind in the music blows away a young girl and a boy hoping to see in the heaven.  The tremulous leaves of tree branches fill and bind the canvas.  A dancer is dancing with joy as she welcomes the beautiful encounter.  In the center of the canvas the rising sun implies hope.  The principle of 3 and 7 is applied to the work in which three dancers and seven grand flora roses are evenly arranged.  The musical notes on the waves are decorative and communicative with the music visually.  The body displays oriented from Korean shamanism dance are represented as a theme with the intense sun which I borrow for the abstract composition.

*The Characteristics of the work by Hye-ja Moon or Her intension

*In the contemporary art, I think that an artist should develop his/her own skill.  I would like to make the paintings that the viewers as well as I could enjoy by showing all the process of my work with my own skill.  I hope that I could express the fantasy better than the music does.  I treated a brush as a baton of a conductor while working.  I wanted to paint a huge canvas such as 162X130 cm, 259X194 cm, 333X249 cm etc. improvising lightly and briskly like I draw with a finest brush (#0).

*First, I paint the background color on the canvas and use purple to draw briskly.  It is my own confidence and dexterity that lie under my unconsciousness and result from the drilling of drawings.  I trust in uncertainty.  I arrange colors according to the principle of contrasting complementary colors.  It is similar to harmonizing tones in music.

*I hardly correct while working.  I focus on leaving fine and narrow spaces adjacent to the drawing lines in order for the canvas to breathe.  It is the moment for me to be nervous and concentrate on expressing my breathing canvass.

*I follow the three or seven principle. So, I draw an image three or seven times on a canvas.  The latitude of Korea is 37˚ north.  I feel marveled at the fact.  I think Korea-like is not always things Korean.  My paintings come from the root of Korean shaman dances.  In my paintings the harmony of colors is always found on the canvas and the colors of my work remind me of colors of May in Korea.