DongEun Tae

In crowded places where everyone is busy with their tasks, I often stop and browse. Bus stops, railway stations or cafes with outdoor seating are perfect for this. I am very distant from the figures I watch, yet my eyes and my imagination are close to them. The more I look, read, or think about painting, the more I wonder. Yet, I paint figures, which could be members of my family, close friends, or random strangers I have encountered in my everyday. During my process of painting, I try to create abstraction within the figuration, through the use of colour and making and removing of brush strokes. I aim to explore the boundaries of lived experience of both myself and the figures that I paint, while questioning the role of oil painting in contemporary art making context. The images that I paint necessarily derive from things I have seen, but when I strive to paint scenes of the everyday, is what I paint necessarily what has already happened? Isn’t there a sense in which they are continuing to happen, in the present, and isn’t there a sense in which they will always happen, in the future?

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