▲ Artist Ryu Heung-gwon

I used to chase sun beams between the leaves of the hundreds year old plane trees and the big poplar tree on the corner of the village. I remember playing with bugs, watching the starry night and wondered where all these came from. The memory of the happiness, so I called, has become a topic of my life ever since and I thought my life is like a bird fluttering the wings everlastingly on this planet earth until it goes back to the universe in a form of particle. - From Artist's note -

Though talented in art when he was a child, Ryu somehow landed in medical school at university. A doubt started to rise as time went by as medicine for him seemed to be a study for simple memorization and he came to a conclusion to quit the major to resume his long time hidden talent. He was 28 at this time.

"I just left the university and opened an art academy by making the most of my every now and then painting skills. Anatomy also helped a lot. It wasn't an easy start but things turned out ok day by day and I became able to create my own style of works."

Ryu had to run the business alongside raising his two children. He kept balance between work and home and continuously joined arts contests. It was after 10 times of displaying his works at contest exhibitions that he gained the title 'invitational artist' and started to spread his name in the art circle. 

Ryu learned a great deal of painting skills from artist Lee Sung-jae from using achromatic color to depicting cold and warm colors and different color variations of the four seasons. Lee is an advisory committee member of the Korean Fine Arts Association and of the Korea Professional Artists Association. 

"I literally had to learn about oil paintings from the very beginning. I remember an episode that I spent 480 hours on a single painting to dig out about the oil paints. The passion finally well paid off and I owed Lee a great deal on this."

At the age of 35, Ryu set a travel crossing from the west to the east of the USA for a month in order to find inspiration and widen his view. He also joined a number of overseas exhibitions and read the art trend of the time. 

Most of Ryu's works are portraits, daily scenes and landscapes. <Gamac>, for example, depicts a wearied soul of his friend seating in front of him drinking beer until late night at the beer house called Gamac. Ryu put an empty chair in the picture so that the viewers can go in and seat to feel the ambience.

"Each age has different skin tone and different wrinkles on mouth and eyes. For this reason, portrait painting is one of the most challenging genres."

Ryu is a selected artist of The First Berliner Art Book and some of his works and his biograph are to be appeared on Afg Art Book being made in Canada at the moment: 2,000 copies are to be distributed worldwide. He also was an invitational artist to Able Fine Art NY Gallery and Paris 89 Gallery.

"I think the eyes of artists should be directed towards world over regions. We have to widen our eyes to communicate with the citizens of the world alongside keeping our tradition and culture and if possible should make travel often to read the global trend."

For now, he is working on his works themed on Jeonju Hanok Village. Ryu is ambitious to deliver unique beauty of the Korean houses and faces and their dynamism to the world when the time comes by actively engaging in various exhibitions home and abroad.