JB Life January 2017

ARTS
of standards women should follow to become the “perfect”
woman, such as domestic goddess, stay-at-home mom, and
so on. In this series, you can clearly see her style of art. Just
like in her non-exhibited works she draws her subjects with
rough lines, then paints colourful splodges and strokes to
highlight their features. She chose four female acquaintances
as her subjects to deliver her concept. The reason behind
this was the idea that each woman consistently faces challenges,
whether racial discrimination, being stereotyped,
or things they have to overcome to achieve their goals.
Nevertheless, to illustrate the strength these women have,
Hodgkiss drew predatory animals (each woman chose one)
aligned with their faces.
Next up, Sabrina Pinksen is a Canadian artist and writer.
She specialises in drawing vibrant portraits, and for this exhibit,
she drew eight portraits emphasizing the diversity of
humans. In other words, Pinksen wants to show that everyone
is culturally and physically different but can influence
each other. Hence, Pinksen linked each drawing with purple
tape to present the “influence” or connection. She drew
a few famous faces among them: for example, the lead singer
of the Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl. The reason why she decided
to choose “diversity” as her concept is because, since
being in Korea, she has met so many people with different
ethnic or cultural backgrounds.
Tara Beck, the next exhibitor, is an American art enthusiast
and hobbyist. She has a keen interest in the art revolving
around fantasy and Korean animation known as “illust.”
Thus, in this exhibition, with the influence of “illust,” Beck
chose to demonstrate the five senses: sight, hearing, taste,
smell, and touch. She made two displays. The first one I
saw was an interactive display, where there were items representing
each sense. The jars stated “taste me” and “smell
me,” which reminded of Alice in Wonderland.
In her second display, she produced a series of four paintings
of animals. She chose these animals as they are known
to rely on a particular sense. It’s very interesting how she
played on these identities with words, color, and zentangle
patterns (structured black and white patterns). She used
these patterns to create the animals, as well as using watercolors
and colored pencils to highlight the objects in the
background.
Another foreign participant, Damien Sullivan, is an American
visual artist. He loves travelling with his motorcycle
to view Korea’s countryside, and because of his hobby, he
is able to capture great scenery which is later used as the
reference for his paintings. Damien mentioned to me once
that Korea’s weather suits his style of painting. Considering
that, the weather in Korea is quite humid, and Sullivan is
very competent in painting misty landscapes.
For this exhibit, he contributed six landscape paintings
that showed the natural beauty Korea has to offer. Each
painting was named after the place he took his reference
from. In my opinion, Sullivan’s paintings looked like photos
from afar; but when you looked closer you could see his
admirable brushwork. My favorite painting was the one of
Ungpo, because the clouds looked so pretty and it took me
back to those times when I was travelling.
Bonnie Cunningham, another exhibitor, is an American
painter and illustrator. Sometimes you can see her work in
JB Life in both article illustrations and her regular
art page titled “The Future is Dark.” Her style is
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PHOTOS:
[ABOVE LEFT] A photorealistic drawing
by Sabrina Pinksen. [BOTTOM LEFT] A painting
by Tara Beck (left) and a piece titled “Beauty in
Strength“ by Sarah Hodgkiss. [RIGHT] A set of
hanji drawers by Natalie Thibault.
[Photos by ANJEE DISANTO]
Jeonbuk Life 29