▲ Artist Baek Young-ok aka Songsuk

Art for Baek was like a fate from the very beginning. She remembers of her childhood class where her works were always hung on the wall, and where she carefully enjoyed the jealous eyes of her classmates. She believed her talent in art as well as reading books and writing poems and grew her confidence day by day. But history tells us that talent alone was often not enough to make a young artist as great as a master and in many cases they led a life that had nothing to do with art anymore. Baek was not an exception from this. 

One day after many and many a year since she put down the brush, she found herself fixing her eye at a signboard that says ‘Art Academy’. A doubt instantly arose that “what a housewife can do at an art academy?” Nevertheless, she opened the door and met Jugyeong who became her teacher. Under the instruction of Jugyeong, she learned drawing and watercolor for 3 years.

She then met Oh Jae-bong (ska Chungnam) and learned Chinese characters and met Lee Hyung-du and learned literary paintings. Naturally, nature dominated the main theme of her works. 

“I intend to create works that can easily communicate with appreciators. Nature always changes. But a painting captures a moment in nature and keeps it forever. So for me it is very important to see nature as it is to better deliver the moments and capturing these moments is my effort as an artist to make a channel for communication with others” explains Baek. 

You can normally find a poem in her paintings since they are literary paintings so it is helpful to understand its meaning. Yet the images in the painting give you instant meaning of it without even understanding the written characters and you might find a beauty of nature and the human world seen by the artist’s view point.

“A painting is instantaneous compared to words. What is interesting is that not a single person among 10 people, for example, has the same impression of the images as others. This makes my job all the more exciting.” 

As her name spread through time, so did the number of her exhibitions. She displayed her works in numerous invitational exhibitions in Japan (Tokyo, Osaka and Okinawa), China (Beijing), US (Los Angelis) and Russia (Moscow) not to mention in Korea. She also served as the deputy president of the Korea Literary Painting Association for 5 years and as a deputy chairwoman of Busan Biennale for 10 years. 

“I felt the strong need for Korean artists to travel the world to see the works of fellow artists and to widen their views and choice of materials. I was especially impressed by Japanese artists in the field of literary paintings.” 

Meanwhile, she has been showing a great passion in fostering talent young artists and she feels really rewarded whenever she sees her pupils grow as artists of medium standing. “I will keep carrying on this passion alongside creating my own works. I hope I can meet more people at my coming exhibitions to share our feelings each other.”