Red vase with flowers

Red vase with flowers

  Still life is called ‘still life’ in English and ‘nature morte’ in French. Still-life, which means non-moving life or dead nature, is a general term for paintings drawn with only non-moving and non-living objects.

 It is not easy to draw life through still life. It is only in a state where growth stops and maintains life. The flowers drawn in this still life are desperate in that sense. As a painter, I know how difficult it is to paint flowers with urgency.


​Maybe that's why I don't have a strong desire to draw still lifes, so still lifes don't appear much in my paintings. But at some point I found time to paint still lifes. Something jumped in my mind.

  ​The point is this. I was thinking too much. Let's live more simply. Let's just enjoy the flowers in the red vase without thinking about their value or their life as they will wither soon after looking at the vase.

  ​When I thought about this and applied simple brush strokes, my painting became very bright. I realized that the beauty of an object can be expressed with a few simple strokes of a brush, just like a pale oriental painting.

 ​In the meantime, why did I walk the road with such a weary heart? At one point, everything I was thinking about felt like dust. The things I loved and wanted to hold on to, especially the people I left behind in Korea, and the feelings I poured out for them all disappeared like smoke. I just need to be myself. Evaluating and criticizing me is their standard and their vessel. Why did I put all my heart into acting in front of people who evaluate me? What I realized while painting was that I didn't have to do that at all. Even if you live your life more simply and more lightly, no one says anything.