"What am I doing right now?"
A surge of frustration rose within him.
Somewhere along the line, he had lost track of his own actions, moving without awareness.
Yong-han stood before the first painting.
He had a habit of reading the descriptions before looking at the paintings. He didn't know why, but understanding the paintings was easier after reading the descriptions.
The engraved words on an aluminum plate with the painting’s description caught his eye.
《The Cow on the Island》
50X50 canvas, oil painting.
“To preserve form and stability, I varied the characters in the work. Previously, using uniform lines sometimes resulted in a lack of depth. But that technique gradually became uninteresting. I’m thinking of an extreme solution. The first thing to do to learn is to be in the unknown.”
Instead of where the painting was made, its background, or story, there were words similar to a letter.
“That’s unusual.”
Sometimes at art exhibitions, quotes from letters written by artists during their lifetime are displayed. However, he had never seen them used as painting descriptions before.
Yong-han’s gaze moved to the painting. As soon as he saw it, his eyes fluttered.
An artist educated in elite methods habitually approaches with a highly trained, rational method. They consider composition, perspective. Landscape paintings should be drawn while adhering to these basics.
But this painting is different.
Yonghan turns his eyes back to the description of the work.
"I became bored with such techniques. I thought of using an extreme solution."
An extreme solution.
To know, first one must be in a state of not knowing.
His gaze returns to the painting.
"Ignore all perspective. It's not just about painting what you see. This landscape portrays the order in which I was impressed by it."
The landscape in the painting shows a sea in the distance, winding roads between stone-paved sidewalks, and old telephone poles stretching towards the horizon with four lines each.
In the middle of the road, red and blue electric cars are racing.
"A scene of waves crashing in the distance. The white foam seems to splash onto me at any moment."
The wind can be felt.
The waves can be felt.
The moisture brought by the wind feels like mist sprayed on the body.
And all this breaks the laws of art he learned.
Neither perspective nor composition is observed in the painting.
The horizon is distorted, and the sky is tilted. The painting is not just tilted in one direction, nor is it symmetrically tilted at a single point.
"It should look unstable."
But it doesn’t. It feels like the warmth of a whirlwind within instability, similar to Van Gogh's "Starry Night."
But that's not all. The distant sky looks like the impressionist paintings of William Turner, as seen on a trip to England.
How would critics, who like to categorize genres, view this painting? Impressionism? Surrealism? Maybe even Abstract.
Unable to take his eyes off the painting, Yonghan finally moves to the next one.
Again, he first checks the description of the work and sees a letter.
"The Old Woman's House"
50X46 canvas, oil painting.
"I passed by an old woman's house in the neighborhood and was captivated by the unique lighting of a shabby thatched house with a small lamp lit. When I tried to paint it, the color mix seemed too dark, and the bright tones transferred onto the white paper looked like ink stains. I remembered how usually bright tones balance with dark colors to appear bright. So, I tried painting with unblended black. Isn't it cool? Unblended black. It's like life. I didn't paint with black, but life always has black seeping through."
Yonghan's gaze returns to the painting.
Late evening, an old woman hunchbacked from sewing, relying on a small light in a humble house without proper furniture.
Her face full of wrinkles from hard farm work, her hands rough.
The light from the small lantern barely illuminates her face and the cloth in her hands.
Beside her, an old dial telephone.
A painting with dark, grimy colors.
It smells like the musty manure of the fields, the color of unpeeled potatoes.
Yonghan clenches his fist with trembling eyes.
"How much brightness exists in such murky colors."
The grandmother in the dark shines.
The deep life etched in the wrinkles, the dirt on her hands and clothes, sing.
The faded telephone beside her waits for calls from her children.
"There's a sense of hope in this lonely old woman's image."
What is it? What's different?
Then, a woman's voice is heard.
"I want people to see things from a completely different perspective. Isn’t the grandmother's appearance beautiful? The dirt-stained pink top and the faded blue skirt she wears, weathered by the Jeju wind, carry a delicate atmosphere. If she wore luxurious clothes, it would lose something genuine inside her. The heart of a mother who sacrificed her life for her children's education."
Who is it? And what does this mean?
Turning around, Yonghan sees the cold face of Director Seo Young-ju staring at him. She's holding what appears to be a letter.
"Yes?"
Director Seo Young-ju glanced at him briefly before lowering the letter.
"I was reading the letter that Jeong-hoon included when he sent this painting."
Yong-han's eyes widened. He looked back and forth between the painting and the letter in Young-ju's hand. Finally, the content of the letter aligned with the painting.
Was that the meaning?
The faint hope felt in this dark, dull-colored painting.
Was it the heart of a mother who loved her children?
In the heart of the grandmother, sewing alone on this small island, relying on a small light, there was love and longing for her children instead of loneliness.
And Jeong-hoon saw that heart. And he painted it.
Yong-han's fist trembled.
"What have I... What have I done to such a person."
Young-ju, with her arms crossed, spoke in a scornful voice.
"Honestly, I didn't want to talk to you, but Jeong-hoon asked me to come and explain. He said it seemed like you were busy entertaining and made a mistake."
Yong-han's eyes fluttered.
And behind Young-ju, in the distance, Jeong-hoon, talking with people, loomed large in his eyes.
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