Folk Painting under New Light

Painter Eom seeks to change traditional painting to suit modern tastes

Painter Eom Ok-kyung is one of the few artists in the country who has been single-mindedly exploring the traditional beauty of Korean art troubled over the true identity of Koreans in the current world dominated by a new ambiguity. Lately artists are compelled to explain the existence of self and society amid the wave of globalization, growing stronger day by day. Artists in the past age did not have to wonder about the identities of their art because modernism esthetics, which sought average values, dominated the art world, not requiring them to secure the identity of their art. It is a different story altogether in the post modernism era which rejected the disciplines of modernism and mass produced diversified and subjective art pieces.
The painter, winner of the Grand Korea Global Fine Art Exhibition last year, has been employing flowers, trees, and traditional musical instruments as her art subjects and expressed them through the Minhwa(folk painting) traditional style of paintings developed in the Jeosun Dynasty to give a familiar look to her work. The traditional artwork on traditional musical instruments was very precise in their painting methods in the past with abstract background.
But the situation has changed, with the painting style looking more like those of the Minhwa. In other words, the traditional folk painting style had been changed with a modern style of esthetic sense.
Painter Eom's style shows that she painted traditional musical instruments in detail on abstract backgrounds. In the center of the canvas are detailed paintings of the musical instruments to lead viewers to travel to the past under the theme of "Into the Scent."The artist gives a lot of weight to the empty space because she lines up various patterns in the space to express the flow of time, and continuity to viewers.
Her painting style shows an extensive change as shown in her latest work. Her work shows she is more into the folk painting, displaying at times, the renewed style of the folk style painting. Her work has more brilliant colors and diversified like folk paintings. Her sense of color is based on the folk painting colors and as every one is aware, the colors on the Minhwa paintings are symbols for shamanistic faith. Colors on Eom's paintings are variations of those folk painting colors in her effort to show off a modern-style folk painting, Her most recent work express a distinct change in style. She is called on to pursue to make changes in the folk painting on a long-term basis, not due to her taste in the short-term. She believes firmly that the formative art does not follow art trends and takes long time to complete its form like a bean paste in a jar.
The creative independence in art is realized after its mutual interchange with tradition and possesses relative character. In this connection, Eom's next artwork is awaited because she interprets the traditional sense for esthetics in a new light and apply it in modern times and because of her ceaseless spirit for exploration.
Painter Eom is a graduate of Hongik University School of Fine Art, and obtained her master's degree from the university also.
She held six solo exhibitions, the most recent one being at Ee-mok Gallery in Seoul April 11-17. She also participated in a number of group exhibitions both at home and abroad including the Washington and New York International Exhibition to commemorate the centennial of Korean emigration to the United States. nw

Go into the Scent; 270 x 178 cm; Mixed Media on Canvas; 2006

Painter Eom Ok-kyung