Intimate, Lyrical Tone of Art
Painter Oh Yong kil upholds techniques and ethos of his age thru his artwork

Painter Oh Yong kil uses the handmade paper, brush, and inkstone handed down by his ancestors to paint contemporary landscapes imbued with the techniques and ethos of his age.
While faithful to the style and spirit of traditional art, in subject and expressive technique he chooses scenes of life that one can commonly see around us, giving his work the intimate yet lyrical atmosphere of East Asian painting. Viewers see low hills, hillocks, narrow and gently sloped country roads, lush green woods, a cozy tiled house, and among all these, glimpses of the people who live there.
In professor Oh's paintings, one seems to see its own hometown, its familiar houses, the trees and lanes and people that one used to see on its way home from school. For this reason, anyone who sees his work will feel warm and contented, because they are full of nostalgia for their hometown of our happy childhood memories.
At the heart of that happy feeling is the artist? clear and simple esthetic of color.
The painter's philosophy is that a painting should be clear, and the predominant feeling of his work is one of simplicity, purity with freshness and warmth.
Over the years, Oh has painted many subjects, but most impressive are the seasonal landscapes that beautifully capture the moods of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. As the artist says, these landscapes draw the eye and not so much to the hills as to the lives of the people who live below them.
These are not views of nature remote from human life, but scenes of places inhabited by people. This is the great virtue of Oh's work, and the reason why it is so attractive to people of our own time.
The painter said that his artistic goal is working on traditional modern painting. He said he couldn't live without Korean papers, brush and inks. "I want to have this tradition remain with us for a long time so that I may be able to work on modern expression of the tradition at least its possibility, which is my desire as an artist," the painter said.
Despite the progress in modern times, he said he is sure that his "old" style art would continue to remain part of art.
Since the early 1980s, Oh said he tried to make improvement on modernization of " mountain and water" painting. He visited neighborhoods to bring his style of art close to people by giving them human touch. He did not limit the subject of his art, but he still tries to find themes of his painting from those places.
The painter's favorite subjects for his work include pine trees, mountains, rocks, rivers, cherry blossoms, persimmon trees, and autumn leaves. Human figures sometimes appear in his pieces. He also likes to express his joy of living and working on Ehwa Woman's University campus, which is natural for him given his penchant for turning into substance his visual experiences.
His work displayed his last solo exhibition at Seoul Arts Center included those done in realistic style, but he always tries to depict what he felt about hills, rivers, and flowers, those in the usual range of his art subjects. He often tried to simplify objects and maximize the effect of marginal space.
Painter Oh is always well dressed like corporate executives, not like a freewheeling artist always looking for changes and subjects for his artistic endeavor. He is one of those traditional painters who have been working hard to keep the artistic style thriving despite rapid changes in the styles of arts in these days.He doesn't appear to be an artist who has been with his art for over three decades.
But actually he is full of revolutionary energy, always looking for change and very self-confident.
He is the person fully aware of where he is headed all the time, no matter what others say about him.
Painter Oh, a graduate of Fine Arts College, Seoul National University, is currently dean of Ewha Woman's University Fine Arts College.He is part of the long line of the Korean-style painting traced to Kim Eun-ho,
master of ink painting with many proteges, one of them painter Ahn Dong-sook. Oh learned his art from Ahn. nw





Vitality of Spring / 42 x 53 cm, ink on Korean paper, 2003
1. Vitality of Spring / 425 x 53 cm, ink on handmade papers, 2003
2. Feel of Summer / 54 x 73.5 cm, ink on Korean paper, 2002
1. Vitality of Spring - Juwang Mountain / 146 x 97 cm, ink on handmade papers, 2004
2. Mid-Summer / 117 x 182 cm, ink on handmade papers, 1998
3. Vitality of Spring / 48 x 65 cm, ink on handmade paper, 2003
4. Feel of Autumn / 48 x 64 cm, ink on handmade paper, 2002
5. Winter Mountain / 53.5 x 41.4 cm, ink on Korean paper,