About
Artist Statement
When I settle down to paint with a watercolor painting brush in my hand, I find myself feeling that my whole being were being poured into the act of painting: my mind, body, spirit, and soul. So, in a sense, say, when I am painting a hillside, where water is flowing into the sea, and birds are flying by in the sky in a formation, I feel as though I were being transported to an enchanting sancuary, hearing a verse from a hymn, "...I rest me in the thought of rocks and trees, of skies and seas, His hand the wonders wrought."
Maybe, I had been prepared, being born and raised in a remote farming village in South Korea. My roots were intricately intertwined with the nature as my very flesh and blood. As part of a family that owned fields and rice paddies, I ate off of these lands. I walked to school many miles on country road through fields and rice paddies, between mountains on one side and a big lake with a long dam on the other. No cars. No phones. No electricity... After walking home with my school friends, I would go over to our gardens by the side of our house, pulled some vegetables and carry them to Mom and Sister who were working in the kitchen. Like this, every day I lived in nature, went to school, came home and worked, ate, rested in nature... Come to think of it,I became nature...also!
Living and growing up in such setting, I always felt that my work of watercolor painting should be more than a mere exacting reproduction of what I am looking at in nature. Rather, something deeper, part of my instinct, my intuition, every cell in me... Then I came to read Artist John F. Carlson's words that resonated with me instantly. For he said in his book Carson's Guide to Landscape Painting, "Too much reality in a picture is always a disappointment to the imaginative soul. We love suggestion and not hard facts." So, when I paint, I get immersed in creating something pulsating in my deep emotions. My hope is that, when someone looks at my painting, it will, to borrow Carlson's words, "evoke that wonderful teasing recurrence of emotion that marks of a work of art."
If I were to catergoize my watercolor paintings in so many kinds, I would name 4 categories: Landscapes, Seascapes, Skyscapes, and Koreascapes. The first two categories may not present any problem to most people. The third one, Skyscapes, may require some moments to think through? I haven't come across such a term used by anyone before as far as I remember. But I came to realize the phenomena of ever alive color, light, interplay with atmospheric flickering stage changes, interactions with land masses, the sun's hide and seek as it goes down, reluctantly saying goodnight through clouds flaming in burning primary colors... And lastly, as an artist, I create the name as a Korean-born artist whose artistic sensibilities have been awakened and enriched growing in the Far Eastern cultural milieu. And I offer the name "Koreascapes" for the fourth category.
Thank for your visit to my website!
Jaikoo (Jay) E. Lee
