Korean Painter "Uncle" Kim Chong Hak, and His Link to Eric Sloane whose Farm Tools are in the Sloan Stanley Museum, Kent, CT.

Kim Chong Hak, born in 1937 is from my parent's generation, and in my mind I call him my Korean Painter "Uncle." He recalls another favorite painter, Philip Guston, who broke from Abstract Expressionism. In 1979, after a personal crisis, Kim left Seoul, to live on the sacred Seorak Mountain, birthplace of Korean culture. Kim says that the "wild flowers blooming in the mountains cured him of his sorrows and loneliness." 

Kim's flamboyant seasons, riotous energy and colors are a powerful remembrance of the majestic force and beauty of nature, what it means to be alive, connected to the agrarian roots of Korean culture and folk art. 

Kim at 77, works on paintings 3 meters by 5 meters. “I can’t draw what I used to draw in my 40s and 50s. I can’t draw something moving fast and I shouldn’t. There are paintings that a 70-year-old artist can create. Artists should not try to copy what they used to draw when they were in their 40s and (young),” Kim said. “My grandfather, who was a poet, used to say a painter becomes a true painter after 60 and a poet becomes a true poet after 70. He showed how great it is to become an artist,” 

Kim collects farming tools as sources of inspiration. This is exactly what artist Eric Sloane did in Warren, Connecticut, and the collection now exists in the Sloane Stanley Museum, in Kent, CT.  Kim says, “I began to buy them because they were not expensive. But they are more than farming tools to me. They have the same aesthetic values I find in sculptures of Rodin and Antonio Caro."

Kim Chong Hak on Facebook  / Website