Being tired of having a disease can lead to new things. Last year, at the end of autumn, I painted so much in such a short period of time that my right shoulder began to hurt. I had injured it. It was so painful that tears came spontaneously to my eyes. It was so painful that I couldn’t paint. People said that I had frozen shoulder. Years ago, my left shoulder had had the same problem, but back then I just switched to painting with my right hand. This time it was much more inconvenient. I couldn’t paint. I wanted to paint so badly that for a while I tried to keep painting with my right hand, but that made the pain in my shoulder even worse. I couldn’t trick my body into painting. I cried all the time. I couldn’t do anything. I had to read holding the book with my left hand. Because my arm hurt so much, I thought that I should use my legs more. So, I walked a lot. I went out a lot, even when I didn’t feel like it. Mad at myself, lost and sad, I thought about what I could do to change my situation. Suddenly, I thought of computers. With my arms resting on the tabletop, I wouldn’t have to use my shoulders. I could continue to paint if I just used my wrist and fingers. My son liked my idea. Being a loving son, he went out and bought me a laptop computer.
At first, I thought about using the computer to write something. Using a pen, I could write with my right hand, but if I used a computer, then the stress on my right hand would be cut in half. I wasn’t greedy at first. Over time, I trained myself to use all my fingers, even my pinkies, and it worked. Even though it still hurt, it felt better. My mood improved. Instead of wasting my life, I had found something that I could still do well. I had found my way into a new world. I trained myself for a month. My arms didn’t hurt much. Then, my son told me to stop practicing typing. He told me to use the computer to draw. This was a new beginning.
My son helped teach me to use the mouse. Seeing my first drawings, he exclaimed, “So this is what it means to be a painter!” My son majored in computer science, and he had never thought about what it meant to be a painter. “It’s amazing that you can make such good drawings with such simple equipment,” he said, promising to get me better software programs. With Photoshop installed, I started drawing, and I loved it. So I stopped practicing typing and just drew. I forgot about the pain in my arm. Forgetting about everything, I started drawing with a pen mouse on a drawing surface that was ten centimeters wide, the size of my palm. When anything went wrong with the tablet, I fretted. Even though it wasn’t easy to use the pen mouse, the tablet gave me a new way to make art. I was using it so much that I was amazed I didn’t break it. Even though I had only one little tablet and I had to draw with a pen mouse, I was making art. By moving just my wrist, I was able to draw pictures of various sizes. Though still in pain, I could draw as much as I wanted to. This was thanks to technology.
I drew the same thing over and over. The difficulty of the new task demanded all my energy and sincerity. I wanted to try out different approaches to drawing the same object. If the object was a cat, then I would draw it over and over in different ways. It was like in my high-school art textbook, where there were almost-identical versions of Matisse’s “Romanian Blouse.” I’ll never forget those practice drawings. I wondered if I shouldn’t dedicate myself to drawing the same thing over and over like that.
With the computer, that became possible. Drawing on the computer was much easier than the messy work of paint, pencils, and paper. When I was painting, if I didn’t like what I had done, I would have to throw out the whole canvas, mix new paint, and start over. It took a lot of time. When I threw things away, I felt guilty for wasting things, and it was a waste. With the computer, I could change colors in one click. This was a big relief. I could change from a brush with a wide nib to one with a thin nib just like that, and there was no worry about the paper slipping or the canvas falling. As a painter, if I needed something, I would have to call to get the art supply store to deliver things. But now all that back and forth stopped. From the time I started drawing on the computer, all these irritating things disappeared. My worries did too. I was delivered from a world of taxing inconvenience to one of complete ease. As soon as the sun came up, I would turn on the computer and start drawing. I forgot my morning custom of reading the newspaper. I gave myself to drawing. Before, I would always go to bed after dinner. But after I got the computer, sometimes I would stay up drawing till three in the morning. I never felt tired, and I never noticed any pain.
Most people think in words, but mathematicians think in numbers or formulas, and painters think with their eyes and their hands. Their hands advance their thinking. If they can’t use their hands in their daily art practice, their vision starts to falter. For us painters, using our hands makes us start thinking. Looking at what we’ve painted gives us food for thought. There’s a limit to how much we can do just by looking. It often happens that when we look back at something we’ve just painted, suddenly a world we had never imagined appears in front of us. That’s why painting and drawing are important jobs. And why the computer is very useful, too. With it, your paints and your canvas are always ready, you have hundreds of colors at your disposal, you have nothing to lug around, and nothing ever molds!
I have always wondered if people can think visually. When I paint, I want to look deeply at the same thing from many different angles, and I want to paint it over and over. I’m never satisfied with what I’ve painted. I’m the sort of person who wants to draw more cats, more horses, more flowers, more inner worlds. When I’m painting, I think about all the other things I want to paint.
Because I couldn’t paint by hand, I painted this book’s images on the computer screen. They’re very personal. This is one way of losing myself in my work. Now, I can show my drawings to others on the computer rather than in person. I’m curious what others will think of them.
(June 2002)
A Person Dreaming While Standing in a Cup Floating at Sea
Drown yourself in pure vision.
A poet said that if you try to contemplate this picture with logic and reason, your head will turn into stone. An artist said that while looking at this picture you shouldn’t rush into talking. There’s no room for words here. After getting rid of words once and for all, approach everything through sight alone.
Space Horses
There are horses in space. There are two horses separated by empty space. They’re too far apart to be moved by each other’s animal instincts. Yet the two animals have become really connected. With invisible wires, with impalpable wires, with electric waves that no radar can detect, the two horses have grown close.
They are a dead father and a living son. The son is left on earth. Deep in space, the father went to a world so far away that we’re unable to feel him with our sixth sense. The father can’t forget his earthly son. He can’t let him be. He can’t stop reaching out to him. His child, his son, is unaware of his existence. The father tirelessly sends vibrations out. The son tirelessly moves, moves, moves. The father shoots out vibrations in every possible direction. With the strength given to him by the hope of just one strand reaching his earthly son, the father shoots out vibrations. Unaware, the young, innocent son absorbs a vibration, and he calls it a cosmic ray! The son feels a mysterious warm sensation. It’s full of love and hope for the future. Without knowing why, the son feels good and spontaneously smiles. The father is watching. The father knows. The father smiles too.
Space Birds
In the middle of the sun, there is a three-legged bird. A bird in the sun is rising to midair in a mural of the Koguryo Tombs. Although it’s impossible to imagine an animal surviving at that temperature, a heat impossible to endure, a three-legged bird daringly lives its life in a world that liquefies all substance.
There are many suns in the world. A three-legged bird lives in each sun, one after another. In my mind, I raise two flamingos, two three-legged red birds. One bird is standing with its feet on the ground, like us. The other is standing in midair looking at the ground. One is stationary; the other is active. With the two birds in these positions, my brain is balanced. When both are active, I go crazy. When both are stationary, I’m sad and withdrawn. These two birds are my mind’s pendulum.
Space Rabbits
There are two rabbits, and each is living on its own star. Their ears are rather long, their eyes are red, and their back legs are long too. Even though they live on separate stars, they look the same, and their habits are the same. Many spaceships fly between the two stars. So many shooting stars and meteors cascade between the two stars. Nothing stops them. So many stars move between the two stars, and so many stars ceaselessly spin and dance between the two stars. At the same time, waves of emotions, thoughts, hopes, and feelings flow between the two stars, wave after wave after wave. Even without receiving any help from civilization, the two rabbits, falling through space, give and receive, back and forth. Nothing can ever stand in the way of this interconnection—not space, not time, not a shooting star. No matter how far away they might become, the two rabbits will never be lonely.
Rabbits
Dressed in rags, the beggar entered the house. No, not rags. Dressed in a straw skirt, the beggar entered the house. Of course, the person inside ignored him. No food, no smile, no water. Then he was told to leave. The beggar took a look around inside, then glanced at the rabbit hutch outside. He went out to it. Around the hutch, there was some grass. He picked some and gave it to the rabbit. The rabbit ate with a happy look on its face. The rabbit did not refuse him. His name was Happiness.
This was an illustrated story in my grade-school Korean textbook. Happiness disguised himself in tattered clothes and entered the village. When he went into a house, the people inside told him to scram. But the rabbit looked at him and smiled. Humans are funny animals: they use prejudices as weapons, and nothing really sinks in with them. Even being locked up, the rabbit was peaceful. Even in confinement, rabbits live their lives free and easy. Humans lock up rabbits and still feel out of sorts. Since that time, I’ve loved rabbits more than stupid humans.
“When I grow up, I’m going to exchange my graduation robes for rags,” I thought back then, looking at the illustration. “Judging from my clothes, the stupid idiots will think I’m a person, but a rabbit wouldn’t. I’ll laugh in their faces.”
I still like rabbits. When I paint rabbits, I think of how happy they make me. Rabbits are simple and take pleasure in their happiness, but people get entangled in their desires and can’t even recognize it when good fortune comes their way. Stupid people.
The Elephant
At first, seeing the elephant, I was startled. When I was a kid, in my language arts textbook there was the elephant, the largest land animal, playing tug-of-war with the largest ocean animal, the whale. By the time the rope ran out, neither had gained the upper hand.
No matter how large I imagined the elephant to be, if I looked at the elephant in the book, this real elephant was so small it disappointed me. In my mind’s eye, an elephant was three times as tall as the 63 Building, but the elephant I saw with my own two eyes was hardly any taller than a one-story building!
Whenever I see a real elephant, I always feel so sad. Looking at an elephant inside a cage with shit coating its body, I feel so sorry for it. Not that! That’s not an elephant!
An elephant is big and heavy. It carries its heavy body around slowly. Carnivores like lions and leopards can’t attack it, even though it’s a herbivore. Good for it! The scariest animals on the planet, with razor-sharp teeth and amazingly quick reflexes, can’t do anything to this gentle animal. That makes me happy. It makes me happy that a lion can’t hunt an animal with big, dull teeth that is used to chewing leaves and that moves so slowly. For me, the elephant is a symbol for kind, slow people.
Holy, leaf-eating beings! Elephants have to live in big groups crossing the grasslands. I get mad when I see an elephant all alone in a zoo pen because I know it’s been plucked away from its family. In my heart of hearts, I want to free them to go live their natural lives on the savanna. Because I get angry, I transfer these thoughts to my illustrations. Sometimes, after drawing so many digital elephants, I feel like I’m expressing the original dignity of elephants.
The Swimming Elephant
I’ve seen an elephant swimming in water. It was a photograph taken by an underwater camera in the wide-blue open.
Since I’m a land animal, I fear water. I thought elephants were the same. So, I was surprised to see that it floated in the water naturally and without any worries at all. It wasn’t just that the elephant swam well, but that it really enjoyed being in the water. In the photo, the water’s wide-blue open looked as deep as the open ocean. And, despite being a bulky animal, the elephant floated like a balloon. Since I’m terrified of water, seeing that photo made me so happy. I was jealous of elephants. Elephants were so great! Elephants can swim perfectly from the day they’re born. I had thought that an elephant was a four-legged animal that could only walk on land, an animal exactly like me that could only live on land. But as soon as I saw that photo, I realized that an elephant was a very different being. Still, I felt liberated.
Maybe if I’d been thrown in water as soon as I was born I would have ended up like an elephant. I lost so many abilities the moment I was born. My mom was terrified of water, and I inherited this, and so I tremble and shudder whenever I see water, just like my mom. The elephant mom was so much better than my mom. If my mom had been dumb and brave like the elephant mom, maybe, like the elephant, I’d be happy in water too.
The Rooster
I heard this from some people I know who are knifemakers. Every twelve years, they are asked to make a sword. They get two hours to do so. If they don’t pass the test, they have to wait another twelve years for it to come around again. It has to be in the year of the rooster, in the month of the rooster, on the day of the rooster, on the hour of the rooster. Knifemakers spend twelve years busily preparing for that time to come. The rooster and the knife are tacitly linked.
The rooster crows at dawn. If the rooster crows, from that time on, it’s day. The rooster divides night from day with a knife-like slice. Darkness and light, good and evil, good things and bad things, what is to be thrown away and what is to be kept, what will live and what will die, order and chaos—the rooster has the symbolic meaning of that which clearly separates all these things with a knife-like slice.
Have you looked into a rooster’s eye? It’s like the eye of a general. A duck has webbed feet, it looks so soft, and everything about a duck is soft and cuddly. But a rooster, everything about a rooster is sharp and powerful. Its eyes are so full of energy. They’re the steely eyes of a general staring down the enemy on the battlefield.
Hyacinths
Hyacinths bloomed in early March next to the front entrance. White, pink, and purple clumps filled the air with their scent. One day, my American friend came to our house to hang out. Seeing the flowers, he cried out, “Hy-a-cinths!” and immediately kneeled near them to take in their scent. Like he was bowing to gods, he turned and stooped to the hyacinths and breathed in their scent for a good long while. That day I felt for the first time like he and I were the same. While hyacinths are from the West, they have been filling the air with their heavy scent since they got to Korea. Until my American friend came to our house and expressed so much admiration for the hyacinths, I’d forgotten they were from the West. I was so used to them that I only thought of them as flowers. My friend, kneeling in front of the flowers, expressed his admiration in a different accent and intonation, but still I thought, “Wow, they’re his flowers, too! But he feels exactly the same!”
I met this American friend when I was making an experimental film. I was busy promoting it. I stuffed my bag with pamphlets, and I went around to various newspapers to give them one. I passed in front of the Korean Herald building near City Hall.
“Oh, this is a newspaper, too, right?” I said to a friend who was with me at the time. “Let’s go in.”
We stepped in.
The building was empty except for a random Western woman at a desk. We extended a pamphlet to her and announced, “Please publish it in the newspaper!” The lady willingly accepted the pamphlet, then read it and said, “Okay.” She interviewed us. She called for a photographer, and our photo was taken. Having that photo taken was one time that fortune smiled upon me. It was the best photograph of me ever taken.
After reading the newspaper article, an American came to look for me in Korea. That newspaper was the only one that published an article on me. My friend rushed straight to the Rose Forest Café in Dongbu Ichon-Dong. He held out the newspaper article and asked if anyone knew this person. Right next to him, a friend of mine was seated at a table.
“She’s at the US Information Service; they’re having a group show,” my friend said. “If you go now to the gallery there, you’ll be able to meet her.”
I was in the US Information Service gallery. I was all splayed out on the ground. I was folding pamphlets when a man with blond hair tied in a bun rushed in.
“Kim Cheom-seon?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m Kim Cheom-seon. Why?”
Then we fell into conversation. We talked on and on, like we were long-lost friends. Just like that, he became someone I would often invite home. Of course, my mom, but also my nephews, and even the neighbors, figured out that we were good friends. He must have come at least twenty times. In those days, I was dedicated to being a writer. He would phone to ask if I wanted to go out, and I would say no, using the excuse that I was home writing. He would come over anyway.
Later, he found a place to stay nearby. It was a room in a cheap inn—just a bed and a shower. As soon as he woke up, he would come over. Still, he was resourceful enough to find a way to bring strawberries, peaches, or some other fruit. When he came, my mom would bring out the little table where we ate. It was the early 1970s. My mom set a table for two. With the table on the floor, we sat facing each other. Anchovy stir fry (with white rice), boiled beef with green chili peppers and garlic, roasted seaweed coated with sesame oil, kkakdugi radishes—he loved food like this. He was also adept at using chopsticks. Sometimes we would take the table up to the roof to talk and stare at the white clouds. It would take us an hour to finish. We remained good friends for a long time.
But we lost touch when I left home and started a period of never having a fixed address. Even now, when I see hyacinths, I shout out, “Hy-a-cinths!” just like he did back then.
Three-ply Eyes
I look at things through three-ply eyes.
When I look at physical objects, I see at least three distinct things. When you look through pink eyes, even a plant’s stem will look pink.
For my first solo show, I painted plants with pink stems, red leaves, and red flowers. To expose people’s prejudice against red, I painted red plants. I loved red so much that in school I would do assignments in red pen, write letters in red, even sign my name in red. People thought I was crazy. If something is just a little different, people will close down and call it crazy even before they have thought about it. I thought these people who thought I was crazy were no better than single-celled organisms, and I ignored them. Then, a part of me started to feel sorry for how simpleminded they were.
By provoking everyone with red, I wanted to express my highest level of peace. I put together so many plants with red stems, red leaves, and red flowers. They were so much more peaceful than green plants. I felt like I had summited Mount Everest by myself. It felt like that sort of accomplishment.
My eyes are hardly ever focused on one thing. Either I space out from reality or, folding it little by little, I cut my connection to it in one fell swoop. I move to the back of the picture frame.
I look at things through three-ply eyes.
