CHUN: Da Thoughts

I feel that my painting style is starting to develop at an accelerated pace. My  identity is starting to gel. For the first time, I am now able to do some paper studies, which proves that my style is being defined in my mind and not by chance (which I am always torn with the thrill of spontaneity). However, a defined style allows me to fine-tune who I am as an artist. I'm very excited of these developments.

I realize that my new style has several traits:

• Acrylic medium
• Primary-based colors
• Geometric shapes (lines, circles, triangles, elipses, etc.)
• Interconnecting lines
• Large background field
• Large geometric fields
• Minimalist
• Thin, flat-layers of paint
• Wide brush-strokes
• Heavy, wide black outlines
• Abstract
• Bright colors

Of course, with art, all of this talk may quickly change. But that's for another journal entry...

Let the city stickin' begin!

Here is the latest art sticker promoting my latest paintings. Special thanks to Ohson and Tim for making this happen. Peace.

We just wrapped up a photo session of my latest works. My photographer friend, Ohson Tsoi, swung by and did a great job capturing the texture and color of four of my paintings and two of my painted shoes. I even modelled infront of a couple of my favorite works, though my face probably showed how uncomfortable I was infront of the lens.

I'm excited to see how the shots come out. They should be processed within the week. From the photoshoot, I'll be printing some oversized skateboard stickers to help promote my website, studio and artworks. Some of the shots will also appear on this site!

So look out for it, peeps! And go sticker crazy!

Ok, can someone tell me why it's so freakin expensive to print a poster at a copy place? Anyway, a cooler idea is to create street stickers of my current style and these will be FREE to people! So go ahead, make my day, and stick them anywhere you feel the need (I do not endorse unlawful actions, of course ;)

My friend came by the studio today to do some photoshoots of my latest works. Im looking to print some small posters for sale. Prints will be a great way to showcase exciting works from my studio, as well as, make a small amount of change.

I'm thinking about calling my next piece "Something art critics can bullsh*t about". It's a working title but somehow, the name sticks!

1. Lay-down a background color to the canvas with a thick, flat-head brush (this may change, of course)

2. Start to conceive geometric shapes--circles, arches, squares/rectangles, and triangles.

3. Select my favorite brushes, which are shorter, slightly stiffer, flat-head or small-head, and nylon (also it is cheaper).

4. Work with bright, contrasting colors (primary colors preferable to start--the brighter, wackier colors will follow).

5. Start interconnecting the shapes with contrasting colors and brushstrokes (collide all of your anger and frustration and party attitude into this part).

6. Let each pass dry and do this indefinately until a complicated mass of shapes develops (this starts a long ordeal with frustration mixed with joy).

7. Start to drop the signature black outlines to add depth, flow, and emphasis.

8. Lay-down further interconnecting highlights upon the black outlines to create a flowing stream throughout the painting (here, you can easily f*ck it up).

9. Leave it to dry.

10. Wake up in the morning and either save it or burn it because it is sh*t!

There's something fascinating about how colors contrast together, how the brush strokes move in different directions, and how different shapes collide. And yet from far away, they all melt together and flow. This is something interesting about my new style.

Currently, I'm sensing a maturation of my painting style. Geometric shapes are twirling, colliding and merging into colorful, abstract pieces. I've seen traces of this in earlier works but now I've got a process in place. I'm still not sure if I can playfully call it "candy" or technically "geometric interconnectivity". Who really gives a shit, anyway! I've noticed that this new style allows me to work in both lightness and darnkess, as well as, variations in color. These are exciting times as I flush out this new style. I'm hoping to accumulate enough representative pieces for an upcoming show. Stay tuned!

Is it me or do alot of art critics and museum portrayals of artists sound like glorified bullsh*t?! If you like what you see, it's art.

Recently, I have done more than 10 acrylic-on-paper studies on geometric shapes and interconnecting lines. I have always embraced abstractness, broad brush strokes, and color, so this emergence in style is not surprising. The overriding concept behind this new style is "connectivity" of life. As if the basic shapes of life are always intertwined--leading somewhere and nowhere at the same time. This is applicable to everyday life and all of its joys and challenges. It reminds me of the interconnected swirls on candy sticks.

"T-shirts with all-over printed designs are some of the most popular shirts out today. They are unique and stylish. Some are so intricate, they look like paintings. The artwork is all over the collar, the sleeves, the sides of the shirts, and even the very bottom of the tee. You can find these shirts at just about every clothing store, but at times they can be quite expensive. Many aspiring fashion designers are creating the all-over print tees because they are in popular demand. Both shoppers and designers are turning to screen printers to get the look they want at an affordable price. Unfortunately, many have been disappointed by their results. Many customers even try to overpay screen printers or offer to do business with them exclusively, and they too are told no."

(Excerpt from YouDesignIt.com)

Columbia Encyclopedia: graffito
(gräf-fē'tō) .
1 Method of ornamenting architectural plaster surfaces. The designs are produced by scratching a topcoat of plaster to reveal an undercoat of contrasting and deeper color. The technique of graffito was used in ancient cultures including those of Egypt and Greece. It was refined in Italian decorative art of the 15th and 16th cent., being then used to treat the entire facades of buildings as great formal mural decorations. Around windows and doors were architectural borders depicting pilasters, colonnettes, and caryatids; remaining surfaces were covered with medallions, garlands, and arabesque bands. Fine examples remain, especially at Florence, and the medium has occasionally been revived in modern buildings. Graffito decoration is applied to pottery by coating an unfired piece with a contrasting color of clay and scratching a design through it to show the color underneath. The slip ware of the Pennsylvania Germans is a good example of graffito work. It is also spelled sgraffito.

2 An irreverent inscription on a wall in a public place is also called a graffito (pl. graffiti). The term graffiti was first used in this sense by archaeologists to designate informal writings on tombs and ancient monuments. Today, as then, graffiti deal with a wide variety of subjects and are often satirical in tone. In the second half of the 20th cent. the term has been applied to many acts of property defacement involving paint and other graphic media.

Working with a really talented designer named GMoney33 for the first production t-shirt line for Graffito Wear. He has a great style that exhibits vibe and class.

One of the first shirts will be a challenging one--working with a Westside crew to do a special, over-the-seams, oversized shirt with his Kimber series.

I am planning to follow-up with a photoshoot in Venice for the upcoming teaser site at Graffitowear.com. Look for it!

I have now joined two great online art site networks--the Saatchi Online and the My Art Space galleries. These are great sites which allow artists to communicate, compete and sell their works. Please visit my personal pages: http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile/Steven%20Daniel+Chun/8329.html http://www.myartspace.com/artistInfo.do?populatinglist=home&subscriberid=cyx5c705la3prrs1.

I remember going to a local art book store and coming across a graffito book. I didn't know what the term "graffito" meant but I did recognize the spray paint designs that I remember from New York subway trains and walls.

This discovery came at a time when my work was meeting a crossroad. I felt my pop art was going in the right direction, but needed some edge--the edge that cuts through the sunny, bright Los Angeles in which I live. I enjoyed the brighter, cleaner, and more glossy look but couldn't resist the gritty, imperfect, and strong strokes of street art. It gave my popism a New Yorker's "punchiness". This will definately add salt to my LA Popism!

I'm energized as I completed 2 new pieces into my new Popism. The look is finally emerging from previous experiments with thick outlining, comic-oriented figures, and brighter colors. But with novelty, my subject matters touch upon society's mainstream obsession with sex and violence, greed and secrecy, and money and superficiality. I have started to move into my paintings in terms of cultural concepts rather than outside with introspective notions.

The new Pop pieces also emerged from a new studio arrangement I set up for this direction. It is here I have disciplined myself to an easle, acrylic, an assortment of brushes, and primary colors (more or less). I have also matured the works over weeks rather than hours, thus gradually working the effects. The results have given me new direction and much happiness.

Perhaps its the LA sun or perhaps its issues in society that aches for attention that has ignited my interest into LA pop. Nonetheless, I look forward to posting the new looks on this site and hopefully have a show sometime in Spring 2008.

Today I ventured into pop culturism and better yet, LA pop culturism. I feel a need to outgrow abstract expressionism and work with playful subjects, bright colors and modern sensibilities. Perhaps the weather and people of LA have cultivated a new sense of artistic direction, but it feels refreshing. I took several months away from my painting partly due to moving but partly for a need to understand and appreciate pop art. Foremost, I moved from oil to acrylic which proved to be a challenge not only in technique but in expression. And secondly, I had to reflect the outside world rather than the unconscious abstract visions I held for so long. The first piece merged a sense of Keith Haring with Urban Graffito.The piece is called "Las Vegas" with obvious connotations.

Many thanks and kudos to Jon Henry and the Barnsdall Theater Art Show committee for the opportunity to showcase three of my earlier combine paintings. The event was a success and it was my first exposure here in Los Angeles. You can see photos of the art show on my myspace@ http://www.myspace.com/stevendanielchun.

Right now, Abstract Expressionists like Willem De Kooning Franz Kline, and Robert Rauschenberg, unique female portrait artist Amadeo Modigliani, Symbolist of women, Gustav Klimt, and Surrealist Rene Magritte all play a role in my influences but this may change anytime.

I try to capture the rhythm I love in music with my automatism and action. I try to capture the concept of “ the moment” I see in photography. I try to capture the inner emotion I feel from reading a book or watching a film, This, I do in isolation, within a small studio with only my canvases and paints.

Women as subject matters have always intrigued my heroes as well as the debauchery lifestyle that accompanies them. For within women are the delicate and the raw, the soft and the intense, and the seductive and the innocent. They, in one sense, represent the emotions of society and inner conscious. I think the purity of a woman lies deep within the persona. And it is this paradox of emotions that I want to convey through context, color, lines and composition in my paintings. It never seems to tire me about the complexity of the opposite sex and perhaps it’s their psyche that attracts me more when I paint them. For the outside is always a shell of what the woman is really thinking.

Why would you want to paint or draw something which exists in the real world? This is why we have photography. I do not want to represent what I see; I know what I see. I want to represent what I feel and here within lies the uniqueness of every artist. No one artist thinks the same or acts the same. Their works embodies a lifetime of experience and subconscious feelings. I don’t care about looking at someone’s portrait nevermind a still life or landscape. I don’t know them, I haven’t been there, I don’t care about a still life of an apple that I've never ate. Emotion comes not from relativity but from the subconscious. One must let the viewer breathe one’s own life into it.

And a note on automatism. There is something about capturing a moment--no past or future. Not a canvas which will sit in a studio only to be picked up at a later time. A stream of consciousness is important in a good painting. There are no breaks. When I come back to a painting a week later, I am a different person, I have a different energy. I am not seeing the painting as I did before. Frankly, it is not the same painting. As an artist, I am not the same because my feelings aren’t the same. So how can I restart a painting?

I revel in watching forms and figures develop infront of my eyes for no one in the world could conceive these because it is happening spontaneously; and no one could think of such imagery because its fate has no precedence.

Also I revel in watching and working with wet paint. It offers many challenges, not only in application but also in stripping. Wet paint is liquid--it moves, it blends and it does it right infront of one's eyes. You have no time to think---you must work with fervor and handle what is developing in real time. This places heavy emphasis on capturing the color, knowing how the paint will flow and how highlights would influence the overall lighting of the paint. It’s a tricky business. I just provide the water and follow it wherever it takes me until my soul is spent.

When I use the stripping technique, I am excited and curious to see what combinations lie underneath. Again, this plays upon the philosohy of fate and chaos. It is like opening a Christmas gift--you never know what lies beneath. Thus, shedding the old layers of the painting and letting it breathe again.

Conversly, the technique of impasto adds to the paint and I get anxious to see how the layers will interact—will they combine, stay on top of each other or fight? It gives depth and texture to a painting without being the subject itself. And it pronounces my strokes effectively by being heavier and broader.

For me, the studio is like a church and my painting is the migration. It is here that the world and its problems fade away from my life. I am totally immersed into the space allowing my inner world to emerge and my outside world become an inspiration. Infront of me is a blank canvas and my paints—they become my only partners. I like to be alone, uninterrupted and get quite annoyed if I feel someone can see me or hear me at these precious, almost spiritual moments.

Once the first drip of paint touches the canvas, the journey begins and you need to take it all the way to its end. On this path, you always get to a point when the painting starts to lose control and you feel despair. The lines fall apart, the color dissappears, the image deteriorates when it was so good only a few minutes ago. This is one of the most frightening feelings encountered when painting. It is the moment when a painting could become a good painting or become a topic of frustration for days. It is also a true test of the painter on whether one can focus and motivate one's energy to make things happen. It is almost like testing my faith.

There are no guarantees on if this would work but when it does, it is as if the painting comes back to life. At this point, the energy of the piece starts to build, there is a feeling of elation and anticipation, even pleasure. This cycle may occur several times in a session and each time one's will is tested. Some will be small turns and some will be devastating, but the journey will bring forth pure creativity and skills.

When a work has finally reached a heightened level of elation, now comes the most frightening part of a session—the end or better yet, when to walk away from it. Could it get better? More intense? Or will it go down again and possibly never resurface? A good painting may be destroyed and sent to the abyss if the wrong choice is made at this critical moment. Accept the faith or be lost. I have spent long periods looking a painting in varying distances, agonizing over this decision. It becomes a mental battle. And it is only a moment and a fleeting moment at best that I realize the painting is a completed work and must remain in the back of my memory.

And if the right choice is made, this is the moment when the painter can exhale, for the body is depleted, and my energy has been sapped. I believe a part of your soul goes into each painting and this is the after-effect you feel. It is elation but also pain—the contrasts of such a spiritual journey.

These days I have returned to the basics of painting as I discovered first in Europe. I have found myself going “back into the painting” rather than “ going away from the canvases” as I did in my combines. I feel that I am making a full circle back to my early days of surrealistic subject matters and graphic compositions but now with years of experience with automatism, figurative abstraction, paint and street reality concepts. And these days, I have realized the sense of my technique, a sense of the paint properties, and an intricate philosophy not only about art but also about the world,

Going back to the basics but in a different form is giving me the most emotion that I have ever encountered in my years of art. To me, my current direction has the potential to create works which not only intrigues but contemplates or shocks. This is the “soul” of the painting which is now communicating through my canvases more strongly than ever before. I now have scaled down my vision to latex, oil and acrylic paints and am drawn to larger canvases to project the feeling.

I am also strongly integrating the concept of lines as I used in drawing and charcoal--the heavy outlining which defines that subject matter. And harking back to my European Days, I am reliving brighter colors which were lost in New York and DC. But from the East Coast sessions, I have not forgotten the impasto and stripping techniques and a sense of street reality (this time relevant to the subject matter as opposed to use of varying material properties). Currently, eroticism and violent impressions are inherent in the works.

Moreso on color, I have also focused on taking selected colors to define the subject mattersgainst the background. It offers a contrast between chaotic brushstokes and interlacing back colors. It particularly offers another way to feel the street reality that my works have embraced. Perhaps it has taken on qualities of pop art and graffiti art. But this seems to be more representative of society today.

The philosopgy behind my combines was my observation of everyday objects becoming so intricate and interdependent with humans. For instance in my canvas “Fuel”, I would take car parts and glue them together in a composition; the notion of one’s car and how this object is so intimate and relavant to society became the impetus for this subject matter. The concept of raw reality or better coined the “street reality” I inherited from my days in New York and DC, easily added to the realistic materials used in my pieces. The combines started reflecting the erotic, violent or sensual nature of the outside, inanimate world just as much as the people who live in it. My integration of varying materials alongside impasto techniques in paint voiced out my representation of the street world with all its polar and gradient personalities which can be both good and bad.

Ultimately, my combine period only lasted a short period but it placed a good closure to my fascination with collages and mxed materials. It has always been a direction of curiosity for me alongside my drawings and painting and I will forever appreciate the gift of street rawness that it has influenced until this day.