Korean Artist Dreams of the West Lake

I interviewed 35-year-old Jina Lee at Eudora Station， a gallery from across China Academy of Art on Nanshan Road in Hangzhou. Her fifth solo art exhibition was in high swing at the gallery. It was early afternoon after a heavy snow， but inside Eudora Station it was warm like spring， presenting the luxury of approaching Christmas. To my surprise， Jina Lee speaks Chinese fluently.

Before she became an artist， she was a member of Hanbaegajok， a well known folk music family in Korea. For 15 years， the family has staged more than 650 music shows. Jina Lee came to Hangzhou in November 2001 with her family to stage a show. The poetic lake spoke to her heart and she did not want to leave， thinking it was the right place where she wanted to stay. Her family went back to Korea after the show and she stayed in Hangzhou. She has been in Hangzhou since then.

Loneliness was the first thing Jina learned to handle during her early days in the scenic city. She came to sit by the lake every day. Gradually she felt purified. She felt she was like a glass bottle: crystal and pure.

One morning， she was taking a stroll alone when she spotted a bevy of birds taking their wings toward her from the other side of the sky. She was mesmerized by the flying angelic creatures over the misty lake. The birds appeared energetic and passionate. All of a sudden she knew she had fallen in love with birds. Since then she has compared herself to a bird from Korea building her nest on the West Lake.

Jina Lee is a talented artist， a graduate with prestigious honors from the Fine Arts Department of Dankook University， Korea. After she came to Hangzhou， she started a career as a creative painter. One of her favorite subjects is the West Lake. Since August 2008， she has staged four solo art shows in Hangzhou and Shanghai.

Jina Lee loves birds so much that they are an eternal theme of her paintings. Birds in her eyes symbolize life， soul， love， future， hope， solace; and birds are messengers. She says she is no more if one day birds disappear from her paintings. She hopes viewers can learn to view the world from the point of view of the birds in her creations.

Jina Lee creates a surreal meditative and feminine space in her paintings. Apparently influenced by the Buddhist statues of ancient times， she creates figures in her artworks that look both serene and peaceful. These plump female figures ooze a sense of love， motherhood， tenderness.

Song Jianming， deputy director of China Academy of Art， comments:“Few foreign artists paint the West Lake. Viewing Jina’s paintings， I can feel that the lake touches her heart.”

She is not interested in fame. As a foreign artist in China， she often sees things and expresses sentiments that Chinese people may overlook. She says by painting she wishes to bring warmth and hope to people.

Jina Lee’s paintings， based on Korean tradition， create a world of fable and poetry in warm colors. They constitute a story of love and dream. “Sunset Moment around North Hill Road” is her favorite piece about the West Lake. The ink painting portrays a fable world in light colors: the western sky colored red by the setting sun， a fish jumping out of the water， peeping at a couple of lovers before turning its head away.

She applies some Chinese elements to her creations. Chinese culture and everyday life inspire her a great deal. She showed me a handbook: it was full of notes she scribbled in the Korean language and there were some sketches. She pointed to a sketch， explaining that it was drawn by a five-year-old boy she met by the West Lake. The boy called it Dragon and Phoenix Twins. She said she would recreate the sketch into a painting.

Jina has painted a great number of paintings with the West Lake as the theme. She said she would sort them out and have a solo show of all these West Lake paintings in the hope that more friends would get to love the lake.

During the interview， Jina told me that she was going to get married with a Sweden and that they would settle down in Hangzhou. She first met him in Hangzhou.

When she does not speak， she is like moonlight. And when she smiles， her face beams like sunrays， conveying warmth and love.

She wishes to act as an envoy of cultural exchanges between China and the outside world. When she first came to Hangzhou， the Korean folk music show was part of a cultural exchange program. She wishes her paintings can be a media for cultural exchanges that make the world a big family.□