Original artwork description:

The Peace Lily Playground series represents one of my earliest moments as a young child. It paints a turning point where the world was no longer so small and confined to my life at home. My perception of the world, which was not very safe, was broadened by encountering a little boy who is represented as the goldfish in the painting. Peace lily, for me, represents home, which also equates to where I find peace and calmness. I also relate the sense of purification with the plants.

All of the memories are somewhat blurry and almost dreamlike. Hence, the paintings show real elements in the world composed in a way of a surrealistic perception, such as the fish that playfully swim around a peace lily plant.

encounter
‘Encounter’ is the first painting in the ‘Peace Lily Playground’ series and is about a memorable event that happened when I was a child growing up in South Korea.

The moment brought shock, due to the sense of irony, which I had never felt before. I was a healthy child, who lived at home and went to school, yet somehow my perspective on the world was so much darker and pessimistic than a boy who lived in a nearby hospital. In the painting, the boy is represented by the Goldfish, who lived in this foreign environment that I had never seen before. He broadened my whole perspective on the world, in the sense that it was much bigger than home, which had consistently brought disorder in my life. This disorder is illustrated by the chaotic nature of the red stitching that bends around the border of the painting, as if gripping to my being.

​The sudden subconscious realisation I had from this boy carried a sense of calmness to my being, and delivered peace and hope—as shown by the peaceful and dreamlike floating of the Goldfish through a playground of Peace Lilies.

Materials used:

Acrylic paint, Cotton thread, Gold leaf

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