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Painter captures people, nature
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A piece of art titled “Stories in lifetime” completed this year by painter Choi Jang-han in his studio in Songpa, Seoul. Choi said he wanted to depict harmony between human beings and nature. / Courtesy of Choi Jang-han
By Jun Ji-hye
Painter Choi Jang-han
By Jun Ji-hye
Painter Choi Jang-han finds inspiration for his passion by portraying the relationship between people and nature.
“I want to show art lovers the coexistence and harmony between human beings and nature,” he said in a recent interview with The Korea Times.
Inspired by Pablo Picasso, Choi dreamed of becoming a painter from a young age, and began painting when he was at university.
“I devoted my life to painting for about 35 years,” he said. “Now, I want to find sublime beauty in nature.”
Choi, a veteran painter who has held private exhibitions 31 times and also showed his work at 480 group exhibitions, developed his work on the theme of people connected to mountains, earth, trees, forests, and landscapes.
Kang Goo-won, editor in chief of Vergil America, a quarterly art magazine that focuses on sharing knowledge of Korean art and culture around the world, offered an appraisal of Choi’s struggle to portray sensual images.
“Choi Jang-han projects his mind into birds, trees and forests. He captures a sense of eternity by repeating images of the four seasons and intimating a sense of space. Like pottery after going through the firing process to become imprinted with his thoughts, his mind extends across mountains and lands,” Kang, also a painter, wrote in the magazine.
Choi’s works depict various images showing the providence of nature where trees, flowers and birds in forests and the wonder of the natural order, as if scrutinizing cell structures under a microscope, Kang wrote.
With regard to the use of colors, Choi has developed his palette from black and white or using a limited range of colors into the gradual use of multiple colors.
One notable thing is that pieces painted without colors somehow create a sense, or the illusion, that color was not excluded Kang explained, adding that Choi’s recent work in which a full spectrum of colors are used are characterized not by diversity and separation but by a sense of uniformity.
Choi is currently keeping himself busy to prepare for another exhibition that will open at the beginning of December at Gongpyeong Art Center in Seoul.
“The theme of this will be Stories in Life-Time,’” said Choi.
Choi graduated from the Art Education Department at the College of Education in Hannam University, and then from the Western Painting Department of Hongik University Graduate School.
He has received a myriad of awards including a Grand Prix at the Exhibition of Korean Arts Contest, and an Art Culture Award from the Bohoon Art Association.
He can be reached at jhchoi412@hanmail.net.