[One Thousand Characters a Day] Author Jo Wonjae's 'Life Shines Through Art' <2>

Editor's NoteThis book neither lists art knowledge nor offers healing or comfort through paintings. Rather, it confronts the essence of life head-on through “art born from human life and strikingly resembling humans and life.” At the same time, it dispels common misconceptions about art. There is no right answer in art. Therefore, it grants the viewer the freedom to come up with their own answers and interpret it anew as they wish. This applies equally to life. Just as there is no right answer in art, life too has no predetermined answers. There are only one’s own answers and stories. At this moment, we become free from many things. When all standards turn inward to oneself rather than others, life becomes lighter and unique. Word count: 894.

Perhaps because I love and enjoy art, I have been captivated for some time by the thought that our lives might be like painting. Life throws us a blank sheet of paper and asks, “What will you paint?” In front of that blank sheet life has thrown, we become the brush. As long as we are born and life continues, we must make choices ourselves. What and how to paint on the blank sheet called life.

If life is art, then painting randomly or haphazardly is not the right order. Moreover, life involves the variable of time. A painting can be corrected if wrong, but life cannot. Once time passes, that is the end. Because of its one-time-only nature, you cannot easily discard a poor work and start over.

Therefore, if you think your life is art, before obsessing over how to paint a tiny detail or which color to put next to it, first put down your brush and palette. With a cool heart like a spring breeze, take time to survey the entire “one blank sheet” of life given to you. Carefully examine everything you have experienced so far, awaken and gently touch your inner self, and explore how to compose your own life. Boldly break away from the inertia of daily life and ‘create’ such time. Just as a painter steps back from a huge white canvas to contemplate the overall composition for a long time, or as a writer spends months planning the structure of a few pages of writing. When creating art born from life, such time is needed for the life that gives birth to that art?it is only natural the more you think about it.

Time for composition, time for our one and only life. When surveying the whole, what kind of original composition does our life take? How much is it truly myself?

－Jowon Jae, Life Shines as Art, Dasan Chodang, 18,800 KRW