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Penelope PaigeHyung Jin ParkViewers could easily be excused for thinking that theyare looking up at a night sky when they see Hyung JinPark’s paintings. The surfaces of these works are dotted withtransparent beads that sit along the outlines of his subjects,giving them the appearance of constellations. The glitteringbits of light are often connected by mesh threads, furtheringthe effect of stars that are gathered into recognizable imagesby the viewer’s mind. The appearance of those images ishighlighted by shifts of color within their borders that seem tophysically lift them up from their backgrounds.But it isn’t just the heavens that are reflected in these works.Those mesh threads also look as if they could be fishing nets,and the hazy yet glowing fields of color they are placed againstcould just as easily represent the shades of deep water asthey could a darkened sky. The artist, who was born in Seoul,South Korea, says that he “grew up longing for nature” andthat fishing was not only a way for him to spend time, but wasalso a sort of backdrop for the development of his thoughts.As expressed on his canvases, those thoughts encompassinfluences including ancient and medieval art and WassilyKandinsky, whose elegant sense of line is echoed in thedelicate lines covering these remarkable canvases.Writing On The Wall Oil on Canvas 36” x 24”Penelope Paige’s oil on canvas works mix the power andfreedom of paint directly dripped and swirled onto thecanvas with a tightly organized sense of color and space.Bright splashes of pink, orange and yellow give an energeticsense of emotion to the moody, more somber fields of colorupon which they are placed. Paige calls her paintings “thetangible outcome of intense passion,” and that passion vividlyemerges through her work’s provocative visual contrasts. The“secret emotions” that she communicates are the result ofthe vibrations of such gestures as placing a zigzagging lineof red paint over a patch of glowing green. In addition, thejuxtaposition of bright shades and earth tones carries echoesof the color combinations found in the art associated withPaige’s Native American heritage, a tradition that also mixesearthiness and spirituality.Having grown up around art and artists, she showed an interestin abstraction at a very early age. That interest was rekindledwhen she took an art class to satisfy the requirement for aBachelor’s degree in Psychology, and deepened when shewanted to express her Scottish heritage. So it comes as littlesurprise that her art compels us both through its expression ofher own emotional concerns (particularly the unexpected deathof her husband in 2009) and its ability to bring up unspokenfeelings in the viewer’s own mind.www.Agora-Gallery.com/ArtistPage/Penelope_Paige.aspxwww.blog.naver.com/cuncowww.Agora-Gallery.com/ArtistPage/Hyung_Jin_Park.aspxA Bird and Candle LightMixed Media & Acrylic on Canvas 25” x 21”99 ARTisSpectrum