Kyoung Ju, b. 1995

I track the countless emotions felt in everyday life and stage witty scenes with my own lovable characters. The characters appearing in my work draw inspiration from the animated characters I mainly watched during childhood. The backgrounds and overall atmosphere in the paintings embody the sensibility formed from living for a long time in a large extended family in the countryside during my early years, creating a pastoral, idyllic mood within the works. To make the figures’ forms and facial expressions feel both ambiguous and yet clearly convey emotion, I use the dry brushstrokes of ink. To express rough, textured brush marks, I sometimes create my own brushes directly from natural materials such as hardened brushes, reed grass, and dried flowers. To delicately capture the strength and nuance of the brushstrokes, I put great effort into the preparation of the canvas surface. To achieve an extremely smooth, paper-like texture, I apply my own researched materials as a base layer, then repeatedly sand it by hand with sandpaper and a grinder. By applying and sanding more than 30 times, a very fine, paper-like foundation is completed—this process is based on the plate preparation technique used in copperplate etching (intaglio). Ultimately, through the encounter between the bold, dry ink brushstrokes made with hardened brushes and the acrylic coloring, I create a unique formative beauty. Through my work, I hope to help viewers recall emotions they had forgotten, and to make the feelings they never want to forget become even more vivid and clear in their hearts.