VIDEO

Artist Talk with Rev. Jeff Lehn

Artist talk at Cressman Art Center February 2022

Performance Dance | Preparing The Table of Lament & Hope
at Presbyterian Church General Assembly 2022

Continent to Commonwealth Traveling Exhibit by Kentucky Arts Council. My work shows at 1:50

My studio at Hite Art and Design Institute of University of Louisville

“I have been aware of Suyun Son’s paintings for a number of years and am impressed, not only for her intelligent, thoughtful, and beautifully crafted paintings, but also for her contemplative and charitable approach to her work. In my mind, her intention to create a relationship with the viewer by inviting them to participate in the work rather than simply as a casual observer is a critical, post-modern notion in art today.”
- Donald Martiny, Contemporary Artist

I work mainly with mixed media on canvas. What we consider realism is a human construct of visual elements. Human constructs often turn things we see, such as nature and people, into objects of commodification. I disrupt this habit by breaking down what we see to its fundamental visual elements -- colors, shapes, composition and textures -- to seed doubt of our immediate perception and affect critical curiosity for the history of images and challenge viewers towards different ways of reconstructing the world.  

My primary medium is acrylic. Paint is color, but also texture and texturized color. Texture presents the physicality of color. That physicality creates a tactile response. I create texture by layering. In layering, time is part of the creative process. I’m not merely waiting for the paint to dry. Life happens. The composition and conceptualization evolve as I return to the canvas for the next layer. I incorporate other mediums to create additional textures that play with the texture of the paint. These other mediums can sometimes have symbolic meaning. In “한/Han,” I used texts from Hunminjeongeum which is a cultural and historical document that records the new native script for the Korean language. Texts from that document were printed on wax paper, ripped into strips, and painted and layered onto butgulsee (Asian calligraphy styled) mountains. 

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© Suyun Son 2018
Images may not be used without prior written permission