Mother-of-Pearl and the Night Sky

Under a midnight sky, a white rooster stands in a snow-covered field. Its body is made of mother-of-pearl — the najeon of Korean lacquerware — shifting its light as you change your angle. With wing-like arms the rooster cradles a branch of pink plum blossoms, its eyes closed in deep feeling.

The literati plum blossom, held by the folk-painting chicken.

Where craft meets painting

Najeon lacquerware is not, originally, painting — it is craft: an old Korean tradition of grinding seashell thin and inlaying it into lacquer. I wanted to bring the light of that craft onto the surface of a painting, letting the pearl fragments glow on their own beneath a night sky.

This painting shows most clearly what all my work is doing. The humble folk-painting chicken cradles, in both arms, the plum blossom — one of the Four Gentlemen, an emblem of literati painting. It is the moment the low and the high, craft and painting, folk and literati, meet in a single body.

Using light as a material

The beauty of mother-of-pearl is not fixed. Each time the viewer moves, each time the light flows, the color changes. I feel that this change is like music itself — never staying in one place, always flowing. It is another face of my 'Visual Music.'