Profound Communication
with Nature
Painter Park attempts to discover identity through traditional Korean painting

Painter Park Jin-soon's ink paintings on Korean paper have been drawing the attention of viewers because of its unique style stemming from the disuse of color; only black ink is used to recreate an ancient style of ink paintings to generate nostalgia for an old school of paintings.
"I have been after capturing the real essence of things using only black ink and Korean paper, which I think Korean people love as they suit their sensibility,"the painter said.
Her second solo exhibition June 22-28 at Kong Gallery in downtown Seoul showed her work over the last three years, displaying the essence of her style of painting, taking viewers to recall old days as the work had been done with only ink and Korean papers with nature as objects including hills, streams and trees, among others.
She traveled a lot in the past three years, in love with nature and thinking about ways to improve her art.
She tried to find ways to express nature through her own eyes, not nature by itself.
Perhaps, she wondered around to find her own identity based on tradition as a base. She tried to express with her own form language the Oriental spiritual world eternally, but the job seems endless.
She was born in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province, where water is clear surrounded by scenic hills. She still remembers many rice paddies in her hometown located in the up stream area of the Han River and poplar trees along those rice paddies appear to be swaying on melodies of songs when winds blow.
With the urban development and industrial landscape taking over the region, old scenery is faded away, except in minds and spirits,
thanking her parents who gave her a wealth of sensitivity, not material wealth.
The painter began to toy with brushes and canvasses from her primary school days. In those days, you have to pay for drawing papers to participate in school painting contests, but her mother would not want to give money to her to buy those papers because she just was hard pressed for money or she just didn't care.A friend of hers who was a year behind her in the school, brought the paper to her and she won a prize with the painting she painted for her on the paper, she remembers.
The extreme conditions she had been in perhaps became a force that made her what she is today.
She said roads and houses in her work were expressed modestly before nature for this reason.
People in modern times challenge nature and try to overcome it.She is confident that she is one of the happiest people in the world because she learned so much from nature in accordance with the spirit of paintings in the Orient including obedience and modesty.
Her work entitled, "Songs of Field,"(1,2,3) and "At Hometown"(1,2), and "Farmer's Poem"are filled with her sentiments during her youth. "Symphony" "Waiting" and "Silence" are rhythms made by powerful streams. "Rock Case"(1,2), "At Cave"and "Relaxing at Cave"show scenes of the wisdom of our ancestors who lived harmoniously with nature, not disturbing it.
She uses no color just black ink simply. It seems like she is trying to reverse time. She will try to change and develop her art steadily focusing on finding the identity of traditional art, which is real Korean in nature and then move forward to become part of the diversified world of painting.


















Symphony | 145x76cm | Ink on Korean Paper | 2005

Mount Climbing | 36x48cm | Ink on Korean Paper | 2005

Small Geumgang Mountain | 48x37cm | Ink on Korean Paper | 2005

A Study on Cliffs(I) | 36x47cm | Ink on Korean Paper | 2005

Painter Park Jin-soon

Song in the Field(III) | 72x37cm | Ink on Korean Paper | 2005