Artist Choi Ji-hyeon: The Density of Oriental Painting Completed Through Thousands of Layers Without a Sketch

There is an artist who realizes the abyss of vast nature using only black paint and a single fine brush. According to a Culture and Art for You video, artist Choi Ji-hyeon builds up numerous layers of life and time on Hanji (traditional Korean paper) using Oriental painting coloring methods without drawing a preliminary sketch. While the works exude a heavy presence when viewed from afar, they are characterized by the details of densely intertwined schools of fish, seaweed, and coral that are revealed as one approaches closely.

Density Created by Intuition Without a Sketch and Thousands of Layers

Choi Ji-hyeon's works are created by directly breaking through the limitations of the materials. Unlike oil paints, Oriental painting paints have a watery property that makes them easy to spread the moment they touch paper, and it is impossible to cover the base color to make corrections. To overcome this, the artist constantly repeats the process of spreading color thinly with a fine brush and applying it again once it dries. The video explains this as, "A solid and clear sense of density is completed at the end of hundreds or thousands of overlapping brushstrokes." Thanks to this process, the forms do not become blurred and can maintain vivid details.

The compositional method of the works is also unique. There is no sketching process to establish forms with lines as in general painting. When the first brush touches the blank Jangji (paper mounted on a frame) intuitively, the lives started from that brushstroke multiply, tail to tail, spreading across the entire screen. At this time, the artist leaves minute white gaps between the shapes, and these empty spaces soften the boundaries, providing the audience with an experience of '臥遊' (Wayu), as if walking freely within the artwork.

Art That Captures Vanishing Moments, Engraving the Traces of Life

The reason the artist fills the screen so intensely is not merely for visual perfection. To Choi Ji-hyeon, nature is a space where life is born and disappears and where time accumulates, which resembles the daily lives we lead. It is said that after facing a handful of ashes left behind after her mother's passing, the artist realized that even a vast lifetime eventually becomes a small fragment and returns to nature.

This personal experience has deepened the artist's view of art. The artist's way of working is to capture the vanishing moments of daily life and the warmth of small beings with the tip of the brush and firmly engrave them onto the canvas. Ultimately, his works possess the power to go beyond the shape of a dense forest and make one face the accumulated traces of time and fragments of life.