Van Gogh x Choi Buk - working process and thoughts.
In 2014, I was asked to participate in a culture exchange event that was held in Umeå, in the north of Sweden. The theme I was given was “What if Van Gogh had met Choi Buk(a little known Korean painter of the Joseon period, 1755-85)?” After an extensive research on him, as I’d not heard of his name before. There were some Korean web pages where I could read his biography, and I could see why he was chosen to be paired with Van Gogh.
Choi Buk was born as commoner, and he wasn’t the type who’d bow down. He was known to be a terrible alcoholic, and (in)famous for his eccentric(or just pure mental), aggressive behaviour - most likely due to alcoholism. For instance, there’s a story about the incident between him and an upper class a scholar who came to him for a painting. He refused to take a commission, then during the argument, he allegedly picked up an awl and put it through one of his own eyes, resulting him earning the title - the (in)famous one eyed weirdo.
Setting aside his antics, his works were quite remarkable. He mostly did landscapes, it seemed, but there were quite a few portraits, mostly animals being his favourite subject. The most well known painting of his seemed to be this great landscape of DIamond mountain. I was particularly drawn to the nice contrast and dynamics in brush strokes in this piece called Joeo Landscape, and found this portrait of a wee mouse wrestling with a radish beautiful.
After studying him for a while, I began working on the project by painting and sketching up a few ideas. I then picked two most satisfying and suitable ones, and transferred them onto lino blocks. Among the prints, I experimented a bit with watercolours and ended up having the final prints hand coloured. I wasn’t completely happy with how they were coloured, but the images as whole do depict the aesthetics and mentality of Gogh and Buk quite well, as well as incorporating my own style into it.
I flew to the venue a day in advance, to lend a hand for setting up the show. It was a challenge as we were a limited number of people compared to the amount of artworks to be hung - but in the end the hard work paid off, and to top it all off, we got to find our event featured on the local paper of Umeå the next morning(on the day of the event).
One of my prints was sold at the show, and the other one was shown at Korean Handmade Market in Stockholm, Sweden later that year.
I was happy to be part of the event. It was great to meet folks from both South Korea and Sweden. It was a learning curve in different aspects, a valuable experience overall.
For more pictures from the event, click here.
