Encounter
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Encounter (2019)
50cm x 80cm | acrylic, hand dyed cotton threads on raw canvas
‘Encounter’ is the first painting in the ‘Peace Lily Playground’series and is about a memorable event that happened when I was a child growing up in South Korea.
The moment brought shock, due to the sense of irony, which I had never felt before. I was a healthy child, who lived at home and went to school, yet somehow my perspective on the world was so much darker and pessimistic than a boy who lived in a nearby hospital. In the painting, the boy is represented by the Goldfish, who lived in this foreign environment that I had never seen before. He broadened my whole perspective on the world, in the sense that it was much bigger than home, which had consistently brought disorder in my life. This disorder is illustrated by the chaotic nature of the red stitching that bends around the border of the painting, as if gripping to my being.
The sudden subconscious realisation I had from this boy carried a sense of calmness to my being, and delivered peace and hope—as shown by the peaceful and dreamlike floating of the Goldfish through a playground of Peace Lilies.