In Her Own Unique Style

Painter Heo borrows from Western styles to create her unique art on traditional Korean paper

     
Painter Heo Joung-hwa showed the changes in her unique painting style of mixing Oriental art styles with Western art styles. Her world of art is colorful because she uses colors on Korean paper instead of the traditional black ink to create her art pieces. She held her 11th solo exhibition from Aug. 28 to Sept. 10 at the Sejong Gallery at the Sejong Hotel in downtown Seoul.
Art critic and art history professor Kim Hyun-hwa of Sookmyung University commented that the Korean traditional paper, the Chinese ink and oriental traditional colors Heo uses tell us that she is a Korean painter, but at the same time, her distinct consciousness of the light indicates the influences of Western painting styles.
She has a deep respect for Mark Rothko saying, "I'd like to express the light the way Rothko did."Heo delicately modulates colors by overlapping objects with objects, objects with background, and background with background on translucent color fields of varying sizes.
  
Heo's technique brings to mind that of Rothko's style, but in fact, Rothko did not overlap color fields except in his early paintings. Rothko pursued the spiritual and metaphysical through the religious effect of the light spreading out to the edges from the center by contrasting two translucent-colored fields. Heo's overlapping-color fields portray the light permeated in nature, changing according to the passage of time as manifested in her paintings 'Morning,' 'Fall'and 'Spring.'This feature makes her paintings look more like those of 'informal'painters than Rothko. Her paintings resemble Pierre Soulage, who discovered abstract symbols in an old backlit tree, and Hans Hartung, who abstractly portrayed the shining nature.
Short lines that attach on the color field and red and pink touches of the brush hint at tree branches laden with fruit and buds, making us confident that her works are simply natural landscapes.
Heo says, "I'd like to express the silence of nature as a sound."She challenges herself to create works where sights and sounds coexist within their absences.
Heo obtained a BFA and MFE in painting from Sookmyung University in Seoul and completed coursework at Dusseldorf Kunst Academy in Germany.
She has held 11 solo exhibitions to date and has taken part in numerous group exhibitions both at home and abroad including the International Writings and Paintings Exchange Festival in China in 2003 and the Philippine International Trade Exhibition in Manila in 2004.
She can be reached by mobile phone at 011-9089-2188 and by e-mail at zauberfarbe@hanmail.net nw

Light and Lyrical Scene-17; Colors on Korean Paper; 43 x 100 cm; 2007

Light and Lyrical Scene-15; 65.5 x 101 cm; Colors on Korean Paper; 2007

Light and Lyrical Scene-1; 68 x 73 cm; Colors on Korean Paper; 2007

Light and Lyrical Scene-18; 68 x 73 cm; Colors on Korean Paper; 2007

Light and Lyrical Scene-12; 72 x 100 cm; Colors on Korean Paper; 2007

Light and Lyrical Scene-13; 72 x 100 cm; Colors on Korean Paper; 2007

Painter Heo Joung-hwa