Is nature a distraction to see our innocence? If we are ever successful in visualizing our innocence, won't there be any natural objects that are familiar to us? Piet Mondrian and Agnes Martin surely seem to think so. They eliminated all those organic or natural objects from their paintings by saying they are distractions, and instead used only Euclidean geometry like grids, circles, and rectangles.
Continue reading...Agnes Martin said “The best thing in life happens to you when you are alone.” To my cliché, I discovered the wholeness of my existential self and connection to God when I was in front of nature in Washington State years ago. I thought it was because of nature, being the manifestation of God. But, recently I realized that there was more to it.
Continue reading...Advancement in science and technology as well as the growth of the middle class during the 19th century helped artists deviate from the subject matter in religion, monarchy and aristocracy, and instead focus on nature and expression of emotions towards nature. Also, it led to a great discovery in aesthetic beauty in color and forms independent of the content. Impressionists such as Manet, Monet, Pissarro are some of the leaders in this effort.
Continue reading...Colors interact with each other when they are placed together. The interaction can be pleasing sometimes, ambiguous and puzzling other times. While we have dozens of systems to denote individual colors, we do not yet seem to have a system to specify a set of colors that could yield a specific interaction. We hear analogous combinations, complementary combinations, triadic combinations and so on, but they are not specific enough to generate individual colors. Musical chords, on the other hand, consist of specific notes and can be played by different players with different instruments, yielding the same or similar sensation of sound.
Continue reading...Ordered Random Studio (ORStudio) is a program that I developed for my experimentation on color interactions. My typical painting process is that I first focus on narration and rhythm using lines and shapes in drawing. I then bring the drawing into ORStudio to experiment with various color sensations over the drawing. After the color study is done with ORStudio, I make the final archival painting, typically using oil on canvas.
Continue reading...When I find a scene of nature with the sensation of change, it is seldom a single perspective or spot. It is typically a space that consists of many places or angles that give the sensation as a whole. The space can hardly be appreciated by a single optical perspective. I have to move forward, backward, left and right, up and down. This naturally leads to a multiple perspective.
Continue reading...Botton, in his book, The Architecture of Happiness, claims that art should pursue therapeutic value. For that, art could be didactic, of utility. Art should not be merely for art's sake.
Continue reading...Nature is the manifestation of God, which is the words, the principles, the great mind, or whatever you call it. We will never know what God is in its entirety. We only know to the extent that we reason and experience. God does not favor anything but to choose a thing that adapts itself and survives what God presents. We are the chosen ones. By survival, we’ve been carved out so that we respond positively toward a certain visual arrangement of nature. That is where our aesthetic innocence or truth lies upon.
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