Meeting Van Gogh (10)
Dear Youngju,
In the cold wind of winter,
Among the faded leaves in autumn.
Among the ripened peanuts in summer,
Among the grass in spring.
Under the waves in summer,
In the scorched farmhouse in winter,
It's always a joy to live with the grass-cutting workers and fishermen.
These things never change and will continue to be so.
Dear friend,
I feel uneasy about drawing sophisticated people.
I try to draw ordinary people and nature that warmly embraces them.
I don't intend to express melancholy in people and landscapes.
Just want to depict the rich tapestry of life flowing between them.
My works might seem commonplace, but ultimately, I hope they are appreciated for their depth and subtlety.
- From Udo (Cow Island), your friend Jeong-Hoon.
* * *
A shaggy beard.
Long hair hanging down, almost reaching the shoulders.
My current appearance resembles Jean Valjean from Les Misérables, who was imprisoned for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving nephews.
In the yard of the small lodging Youngju found for me, my paintings are drying in the natural sunlight and wind, and I am sitting on a platform, finishing the paintings I started outside.
“There, teacher.”
A sudden voice.
But I wasn't surprised.
It's a voice I've been hearing every weekend for the past year.
Maybe I've been waiting all week for this voice to come find me.
My half-bearded face no longer wears a mask, but still, nobody recognizes me.
The clean-faced, elegantly styled me on TV and the current me are entirely different people.
“Have you come?”
The stone wall that borders the yard and outside.
The guy who doesn't step inside my home without my permission, peering in from outside.
It's Jun-Young.
A school junior I met by chance at the seaside when I started painting here.
For the past year, he's visited this place every two weeks.
Jun-Young bows respectfully to me, sitting on the platform, then starts taking out things from the backpack he brought.
“Autumn is here again. I bought some figs and persimmons because they're good. And teacher, this is pork. I'll put it in the freezer, so take it out and grill it.”
“You don’t have to bring such things. You don’t even have money.”
“No, I do it because I want to. And who says I don’t have money? Thanks to you, my SNS earns a lot from advertising.”
“Ha ha, okay, got it.”
What happened?
That day at the seaside, Jun-Young took a photo of my painting and posted it on SNS.
The painting of an unknown, unnamed artist. The birth of Artist A.
Did posting one painting make a difference? Not at all.
Contrary to the expectations of his three friends who came with him, it rained on the island for three days.
The friends planned to leave after three days, but high waves prevented boats from leaving the island.
The cash-strapped students wandered the island with their backpacks and met me by chance in front of a seafood restaurant.
Hearing their situation, I invited them to stay at my lodging, and after three more days, they finally left the island on the sixth day.
Whether those guys were there or not, I went out to the yard and painted the flowing eaves and cloudy sky, the wet stone wall, and the rain-filled platform.
The guys would always stick close and sneak peeks at my painting.
Two weeks after they left, Jun-Young came back.
He said he brought some side dishes his mother made to thank me.
And he was surprised to see the works I completed in those two weeks.
"Senior! It's only been two weeks since we last met, but you've already drawn fifteen paintings? Are you drawing one every day? Is that even possible?"
I smiled wryly and replied.
"Those who don't want to do something will always find an excuse, and those who do will always find a way."
It was just a casual remark.
But Junyoung was deeply moved by it. He pondered over it even after returning home, making it his life's motto. It was just something I blurted out, though.
Afterwards, he would visit every two or three weeks, always asking my permission to take photos of my work.
He needed my permission because he uploaded the photos of the paintings to his SNS.
Returning from putting meat in the freezer, I saw him admiring the paintings and asked,
"Did your SNS followers increase?"
Excited, he ran over and showed me his phone.
"My followers have surpassed 700,000, Teacher! It used to be just my friends, about 500, but now it's increasing by 3,000 daily. There was even an article recently. Reporters DM me asking who Painter A really is."
On his phone screen, there were over a hundred posts, just of my paintings. It's quite surprising that 700,000 people are viewing these posts.
Looking back, this guy has a knack for photography. He took some really cool shots of my paintings.
"What's with these posts of brushes and paint in between?"
Junyoung, looking a bit embarrassed, scratched his head and hesitated.
"Well... as the number of followers grew, I started getting more ad inquiries. Mostly art materials, but I mix them in."
"Are you making decent money?"
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