Painting Love with God

Artist Chang pursues a unique world of art employing flowers to understand God’s creativity

Painter Chang Woo-soon is not an ordinary painter because her motives are made of the interpretation of her Christian faith mostly through paintings of nature such as trees, flowers, especially, the lotus flowers that bloom around the ponds nearby her house in the countryside.
She had to pass by the ponds to go to school early in her life, which gave her lessons on how to appreciate nature, flowers, in particular, so much so that she created nature on her canvasses later when she became a painter.
Her ability to appreciate nature and sensitivity that she learned in her childhood later became a major force to shape her artistic style, along with her deep faith in Christianity later.
She believes that an artist should play the role of a creator as the artist cannot said to exist without creativity and individualism. She started out having nature as her motive in her painting, but later espoused her faith in Jesus in her art describing Biblical stories in her paintings.
The painter came to paint Biblical stories in her paintings in appreciation for God’s love as she firmly believes that her life is being guided by God all the time from morning to night and she wanted to something for God who guides she and her family every day.
She changed her painting style in her expressions of Biblical subjects. The style resembled abstract form. For example Mary’s figure didn’t show her face and her body such few lines and color over abstract form. Her paintings of Jesus with his disciples were also in abstract form with their figures expressed in simple whimsical lines with no noses and eyes just to express the Biblical stories or messages in symbols with light color over them almost looking like prints and soft pastel color paintings.
She succeeded in expressing to her art viewers that her religious paintings are really done for evangelical purposes by leading the viewers to interpret the work freely not bound by the religious motives.
Her religious paintings are done on canvasses covered with four-layer Korean traditional papers called Hanji, showing the neutrality of her painting canvasses. Sometimes she decides to trace God’s sacred creativity through flowers, especially, their beauty when blooming and when dying to express diverse meaning of the life of flowers, hoping that the viewers her paintings would feel free and think freely when looking at her paintings.
The painter won many prizes at domestic art exhibitions both individual and group displays including the Korea Art Fair and has been active as members of the Korea Fine Arts Association, the World Fine Arts Exchange Association, the Gunpo Fine Arts Association, and others. She also participated in the SK Ventium Invitational Art Exhibition and also in overseas painting exhibitions jointly held with foreign art galleries to introduce Korean paintings to deepen overseas viewers appreciation of Korean paintings.
The painter is a fine art major from Baeksok Art University and completed fine arts courses at the Western Planning Institute at Hongik University in Seoul.
She used to say that the painters play the role of loosening public minds depressed by many tough problems in their lives through exhibitions of their artwork. Therefore, the painters should always try to upgrade their artistic endeavor with creativity, not overly conscious of commercial values by always studying to further develop artistic talents. nw

Blessings on Life: 92.7 cm X 72.5 cm:Korean Paper: Paint Powder: 2011

Annunciation: 92.7 cm x 72.5 cm: Korean paper: Paint Powder:2011

Painter Chang Woo-soon