Tag Archives: figurative painting

My painting can be understood best when looked at with an understanding of the Tibetan Buddhist ideas of Maitri and Tonglen. (Maitrī loving-kindness) and Tonglen (giving and taking) are two related practices in Buddhist traditions, particularly Tibetan Buddhism, focused on cultivating compassion and kindness. Maitrī involves cultivating a warm and benevolent attitude towards oneself and others, while Tonglen is a meditation practice that involves breathing in suffering and breathing out relief, compassion, or loving-kindness.

I didn’t start out as a kid practicing this meditation. I was adopted as an infant from South Korea when I was 3 months old. And my parents weren’t Buddhists. My dad told me he used to practice transcendental meditation as an adult, but never taught me how. I came to it, through wanting to connect more deeply with my Korean heritage. That was about 10 years ago.

I didn’t start, wanting to merge my meditation practice and my painting practice. But because of the visual nature of tonglen, the imagery was a naturally on my mind. And had no idea what I wanted my thesis to be. So, both created a synergy that helped me inadvertently heal, and explore the different relationships in my past and in my present. By the end of my graduate studies, my thesis was: Painting and Meditation: Paths to healing. I even tried my thesis out in the community. I had around 10 women come to learn tonglen meditation. And to use the imagery from their meditation, as the subject for their artwork. They painted a suffering and the opposite of that. They used photos, to help inform their work. And then they talked about the transformation. It was a beautiful and empowering workshop.

After placing myself in tonglen. It was shocking to discover that I had never really jumped off the hamster wheel of life to even talk or address the ambiguous loss I’d carried for years in my body and psyche. I had never even talked to anyone about how hard it was to miss a family I had never met. Or the woman who carried me and birthed me. But the loss is real. This meditation of compassion gave me the space to fully sit with that grief and actively tend to it. I seemed to have just fleshed it out more fully in my paintings.

I made my very complex and heavy feelings into a visualization in my mind. Then used those as a springboard for narrative paintings. Turning trauma into a concrete painting. Painting has played a part helping me make of sense this unique journey. Of what had missing pieces and lies. I’ve created a story with a start, beginning and ending, that made sense to me. Not the dominant narrative of the adoption industry, or lies or mystery surrounding my adoption. Not adoption from the parents perspective. Not adoption from a Christian perspective. But one that comes from historical facts and felt memories from my body and how I felt about being adopted and having gone through so much with so little.

In 2016, I saw the photojournalism of these displaced refugee children at the gate in Kilis, Turkey. People were being shot as they tried to cross out of their war torn home of Syria. This photo captures kids becoming displaced people. Being a displaced person has made me an international citizen. Painting directly from the photo while changing small things like the gate colors to infuse America’s presence. I made the girl in pink to look like me as a toddler. I did change the baby’s eyes to look directly at the viewer. I was on a roll here, moving my meditation onto strangers I didn’t know. People on the news. I just so happened to be able to relate.

In ‘Feeding Time’ subject play with ideas of being nourished in captivity in an unnatural environment at the Wild Animal Park in San Diego. I was trying to express the absurdities, dangerous issues in American culture and realities of parenting in 2017. Child trafficking, abuse and the ridiculous standards and roles that are expected and fulfilled by mothers. Letting in those issues and risks, gave me a broader range of character to play with which was really fun. I really enjoyed designing the composition to create this cramped, foreboding space.

Dancing brings me great joy. For me, It’s wildly feminine, spontaneous, expressive and cathartic. Dancing to DJ’d dance parties helped me get through Covid. So, when I found a photo of people doing tantric dance in the Netherlands. To me, this painting signifies freedom joy and sensual pleasures and a trust in the feminine and masculine moving in spontaneous harmony. I painted it for a public art viewing in downtown space. I wanted to make something that signaled the end of social distancing. At the same time, I liked that the men were letting the women lead them through space. It signaled to me a trust. Which, for in America, the Supreme Court had just reversed Roe v. Wade.

This dance was photographed in a very brightly lit ballroom with a bare wood floors, with random music stands and billowy curtains in the background. The color was too white, too bright and the figures were getting lost. So, I decided that blue would be a perfect color. I had been swimming and diving in the Lakes in Montana, and realized that blue of the water would be perfect balance to all the activity and detail in the figures. It is like they’re dancing underwater or in the sky, free flowing.

I painted a still from a YouTube video of a young Korean woman eating Korean noodles. Her name is Dorothy.

Mukbang is the art of eating Korean food as a performance for all those who click on the video. I enjoy watching these videos. And they are highly addictive and always inspire me to make Korean food. I’m not one for K-Dramas, but I am highly drawn to the Visual and audible feast. Plus I love seeing what South Koreans are eating.