Mind study of Yeon Ju Kim-Mind awakened by the tinkling of a wind-bell
July 28 2009/Gu Won Gang(Vergil America Cheif editor , painter)

"A body is watching, light and circulation of consciousness. When the watching is blocked, I ponder how to solve it. I could come through the blockage after thinking that I should put down consciousness in my dream. I practice even in my dream. The prayer should start from putting down the wishes not desiring to have things. When you die, you must die until there is no thinking of 'I'. When you go down deeply into the thinking of being mindfulness and adapting yourself to the nature, you reach 'Seon' and with the question that there is mine and yours separately, if you don't ask for, there is nothing to conflict. Dream is reality and reality and dream become one, you can reach Seon." Fragmentary thoughts on the paintings of Yeon Ju Kim lead to the path of Seon through the meditation which prepares herself and hope to be helpful a little bit to others except for me. Even if paintings are not enough to comfort her as much as she thinks, the mind that wants to draw more comfortable paintings is unchanging.

Through her brother's death 5 years ago watching the process of death, the moment she is aware of the reality that end and start are one, she realized that the place her brother left is the same world. "My sister, now I'm not going to come down from where I live, do not worry and take care." This statement has the meaning of awakening that accepts death as a reality and makes me feel that death is also one way of life and have a new understanding that one thought of today is the past, the future and the important moment of the present. The canvas is an open space which expresses freely floating mind or a horizon, sky, sea and calmly flowing image. She tries to draw the nature as it is as speed and flow which are colors and making a brush stroke. Therefore, colors and shapes which are shown are brought in the mind and are combined with artificial colors randomly and lead to making a brush stroke through the aging.

When the traces of the wind and waves are touched by the hands to get overripe at the tip of a brush, the canvas is already returned to the nature that is the image as it is. The filtration of repetition that erases and paints becomes a part of nature making another me who is not me through sympathy with a canvas with inspiration of space, colors and flow just as an art therapist maintains the meeting of communication with patients through numerous conversations. The features which are carved when the leaves are shaken by the wind are left only in images and time of the instant is returned to the sound of sympathy and spatiality is acquired.

I heard that Yeon Ju Kim drew the most pictures in her junior high school days.

Praise of her friend who took the buckets together from the cottage which likes like a nest at the bottom of a hill and one word of the art teacher, 'you draw very well' brought her to the world of paintings like a magic and looking down at the waving barley field, numerous thoughts arise that she would draw the magnificent scenery. After tens of years passed by, she felt the splendid delight the moment of completing barley waves in the making a brush stroke of the broad and flat brush. This could be a joy for those who draw paintings. Because of this, it is recognized that the wind could be a making a brush stroke of God and an echo, sound, silence etc. are located as charms that fill the canvas. This will be called the same experience as newly composing oneself awaken by the tinkling of a wind-bell.

It must be a destiny. In her first exhibition, one monk kept staring at the paintings and her so she asked why, he said, "I was watching who is the owner of this painting. The painting is so clear but to keep the clearness you have to build up the power and the power means to remove images. Aging is to keep childhood, middle age, and old age at the same time and beauty comes from here." As time passes by, she knew that disappearance is one body with birth and she came to feel with her body that the new direction of her life, that is life and death is not separate but the same through the death of her parents and siblings.

A brush stroke of Yeon Ju Kim who experienced a violent wave of life is naturally continued like operation of the universe. The curves sometimes repeat expansion and contraction towards the sun and sometimes maintain horizontality like the wind, the shaking curves are conveyed as sounds and make us feel the romance of the moonlight. She is not dealing with irregularity of thunder and lightning and soft and sweet sounds of strings like leaving the body in the silence which is soaked quietly approach like soaking in the ears. Even in the world of sudden changes, intensity of primary colors is refined smoothly in the course of time which is the speed of a brush stroke and the feature which sways lightly just as leaves swing sinks in the woods and embraces the shapes like sinking in the depth of ocean abyss. That's why nature which is approached weaving with red, blue and yellow calls the swing of the barley field in her childhood as waves and frequents throes of expression which suck sounds and repeats pregnancy and birth.

The drawing of Yeon Ju Kim where silence of the day which the lake soaks the village and chirping of birds holding summer forests is heard at the same time might be the eternal scenery as the most difficult product of the mind study of putting down and emptying.