Expecting Guests Painting

As the wife of a foreign graduate student raising two young children while struggling to make ends meet, I still tried to find time to study art. Art was the medium through which I could encounter and express myself, without recourse to language, without being encumbered by social mores and discrimination. With the freedom of self-expression that only art can provide, I began to explore ways to express the Korean archetype. To be sure, the artistic media through which I express the Korean archetype are thoroughly modern, Western. After all, it is in art schools in Baltimore, Washington, DC, and Paris that I studied art. It is through oil, acrylic, canvas, pottery, and mixed-media that I have tried to convey the ‘essence’ and beauty of the Korean archetype. It is through the Western media that I express the Korean archetype. In that sense, I am a thoroughly modern, Westernized Korean. In fact, I believe that it is only through the modern media that Korean archetype can receive true expression. Traditional Korean media such as brush painting, pottery, and folk-art that earlier generations used to express the Korean archetype belong to their age. Today, we need to fine ways to capture the Korean archetype through the modern media. We are all ‘moderns’, after all.