11th June, 2011 Artist Hyeja Moon
*I’m thinking of being away from painting in doing something else in the weekends. However, there will be another day that fails my expectation. Out of my intention I return to be a painter even when I sit in a coffee shop looking around or admire the scenery.
*There is a tree along the street where I come across on Saturdays. It is in delicate health and much of the bark of the trunk has flaked off. Nevertheless, I keep an eye on it to sketch for its patterns with a plastic property are worthy of notice. They are so thin that even the shadows of them are slightly transparent when the sun shines on those broadleaves of the tree.
*In a week’s time they have been rotting and withering here and there while the leaves were fresh and green. I was fascinated by the colors of the rotted and dry leaves. The dark mahogany that came from the mixture of various colors seems to be the blackish blood of rotten fish. Those parts of the leaves remind me of the place of death where no light can be trespassing. The color that fresh leaves never produce belongs to death.
*Then, my face flushed with excitement as if I found out something great.
*Recently I’ve been working on a canvas sized 259.1 X 193.9(cm) portraying the leaves. I represent each leaf swaying in the wind differently by scratching with the fine edge of a graver on the two layers of ground colors: the bright color of light (life) at bottom, thick violet of death on top. I was anxious to know how to give life to the parts where I put a lot of time and effort. The scratched parts seem to be the parts of living shadow of the thin leaves!
*A tube of the violet color I use is 75,000 won. In spite of such high price, it has been my favorite to lower a chroma instead of using black. All the while I just used the color as a ground color or to make a mixture. Today I’m happy to get the serendipity and obtain the knowledge: the second application of scratch technique accomplished. For the last weekdays, it has been a real struggle to draw numerous leaves by scratching and the whole work required me to take a painkiller. I’d like to leave the traces of my behavior.
*I enjoy expressing a motion of wind in painting a figure of Flame Grass before it blooms. And I finally managed to express the fluffiness of Flame Grass. It became my own way of expression, which pleased me a lot. Now I accomplished the second application of scratch in painting. It gave me another happy day. Again I spent this weekend to be the one with painting not to be away from it.
Written by the artist Hye-ja Moon (06/11/ 2011)