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Modes of Creative Production - Seoul '97
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My artwork is created in two modes: One could be called Project Art and the other called Personal Art. I alternate between these modes according to inclination, income, environment and available resources.

Project Art directed in three major directions: Fine Art, Art Education and Art Business. I make work for display in homes and galleries and devote a portion of my time to teaching art to all levels of young people. I do commercial artwork projects for money which primarily benefit the client and myself and I work with government agencies to produce public artwork that benefits many. My goal is to engage in projects which integrate these three directions. To synthesize fine art, art education, art business and public art.

Project Art is created by relatively large scale productions leading to a large piece or suit of artwork. This kind of work requires a lot of time, money and equipment. As a result it is most often produced in collaboration with other people. The creative portion is usually only a short period which could have originally come in a flash during the planning stages and then much production effort is devoted to realize this idea. This kind of Project Art would include my work such as: EnvironMental Produce, Artomatic or Scenic Suits as well as school murals and public art murals. Because of the effort and expense involved I feel very confident about this work. Indeed confidence is essential to its realization.

Public art and school mural projects are intended to introduce organic form and colour into the otherwise gray and rectilinear urban environment. I also endeavour to produce public art projects in which the people of a particular area can work together to express their own local cultural identity and creative ideas. To develop a public art that is truly public and truly reflective of the local culture.

My Personal Art is on a much more intimate scale. It does not require many materials or equipment to create and is often made with found or appropriated materials. This work is created with only my hands and simple tools, alone in the studio. The creative effort is sustained throughout the creation of the work. Personal Art would include: my drawings, my ink on paper studies, my wallpaper and poster excavations and my photographic work. As the work is so intimate I am usually reluctant to show or talk much about it. I push the limits of my skill in a particular medium, leading to chance and accident.

The subject matter is most often based on naturalistic imagery like landscape, flowers and fruits and natural forces like fire, water, earth and sky. This has lead my study of Oriental painting and calligraphy. The beauty of a particular work of calligraphy comes from the particular controlled and accidental interaction between brush, ink, water and paper.

I'm concerned about the gap between an artistic expression and the real world. Oil on canvas has very little to do with the ocean waves and foam in seascape or the trees and mountains in a landscape. In fact, oil and water don't mix. On the other hand, Oriental landscape paintings are created from paper made of wood pulp, ink made of burned vegetable or tree oil and water, most often from the immediate environment. The brush is made of animal hair and bamboo. In this way the landscape painting is made from elements directly from a landscape.

In a similar way I believe that rather than making art which depicts a subject or my surroundings in a foreign medium it is more honest to make art directly from elements of the actual environment it is created in.

Seoul, 7/97