On the Painting Titled Aftermath of an Ancient Battle

Above all, Younghee loves to paint. Her new body of work is earthy, textural, and full of movement. The artist’s brushstrokes create an undertone of surface pattern, as she alternately disrupts and preserves the flatness of the picture plane. Her compositions bring together color, space, and line, to create a world where the predictable and the unexpected merge.

In the painting titled Aftermath of an Ancient Battle, Younghee gives us a glimpse of the chromatic underpainting through a hazy muted surface of Naples and Indian yellow. Light seems to come from inside the canvas. The human forms, varying from just under life size to five or six inches in height, are drawn in such a way that they appear to be looking at each other and at the same time seem to revel in self-reflection. The size of the brushstrokes, as much as the scale of the figures, suggests space that is deep and vast. The artist makes the figure-ground relationship ambiguous. The group of survivors, Aeneas, Anchises, Iulus, are looking toward the distant city of Carthage where they are to take refuge, while Neoptolemus, Cassandra, Athena, and others are embroiled in struggle in the remnants of the sacked city of Troy. These and other images merge and re-emerge through painted and scratched marks.

The palette is open. With contrasting bits of colors, such as Madder Lake crimson, Viridian green, or Manganese blue, lead white and black, she punctuates the canvas creating movements from edge to edge. She uses vertical, curved lines to affirm the picture plane. All these elements come together with an authenticity and emotional intensity that give this painting its power.

© Carol Heft, August 2004