Meet Yang Soon-young (양순영), an artist who creates textured geometric abstract paintings. Throughout Yang’s career to date, her work has been exhibited at 40 solo exhibitions, and displayed at around 480 guest exhibitions. Yang has been the recipient of several prize wins and continues to display her work at international art fairs, residencies and guest exhibitions.
Yang Soon Young majored in art, craft and philosophy when she was a student and currently teaches arts, design and history of arts to students at a university. Talking of the start of her artistic career, Yang shared that her decision to be an artist was not extraordinary. She simply “became an artist because the arts give me the energy to live. To me, art is like fate.”
Talking of her art, Yang shared that there is a “textured silence in my paintings.” The repetitive mark-making Yang employs to construct her paintings results in highly textured geometric abstracts that resemble building blocks made up of strokes of paint. It is a profoundly meditative process; one that offers her a way to construct for herself a sense of humanity’s place in the universe. She is influenced by theories of astral projection and wants to draw the viewer into pure colour and show them what she finds there: ‘uncountable existences filling the canvas’, each shade variation part of a shimmering whole.
Yang’s biggest influence in terms of art is Jackson Pollock. She admires the lines in his work which she feels “look free and nomadic.” Yang is also influenced by the philosophical ideas of Gilles Deleuze.
What has been the best piece of advice you have received as an artist?
Insight, freedom of thought and creative thinking and acting.
When you start new pieces, what does your creative process look like?
I do meditation. Also, I visit India every year for meditation and to comfort myself. My colours are coming from my mind. I express my mental status with the colours, such as when I become peaceful, or keep staying in the specific emotion.
How do you overcome creative blocks?
I disperse my energy to other things, especially something that I can focus on with simple processes, such as sewing or embroidery.
What has been a reaction to your artworks that has stayed with you?
My way of creating the works is quite unusual. Therefore, I received several questions from the audience especially when I exhibit my works at international art fairs or exhibitions, sometimes journalists request interviews. Also, it was interesting to see the preferences of colour, depending on culture – each country has different preferences in Türkiye, India, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, China, and the USA.
What do you hope people take away from your artwork?
I hope the audience could see their mind from the colours. I hope the time when they are watching at my work could be a time for treatment, thinking what they have felt from the colours rather than understanding what the artist intended.
Yang’s advice for aspiring artists: Please discover yourself and love yourself. You can’t help but love yourself if you truly know yourself. And please find your will for the arts. Every action that you take has some kind of intention, and reason. Therefore, if you keep your action going, you will find a happy life as an artist. It would be a lonely fight and might be difficult to stand if you don’t love yourself.