Artist Christine Seo arrived in California from Seoul, Korea with her family in 2020. Graduated in Fine Arts from Seoul Women’s University and having founded and taught at her Preparatory Art Academy in Seoul, she has gone on to study and improve. styled with famous Disney designer Roger Armstrong.
Seo, www.christineseo.com, now lives in Chesterfield, Burlington County, and is firmly established in that region’s arts community, arts organizations and exhibition venues. Winner of numerous awards, she is currently exhibiting a collection of her watercolors and oil paintings in the A-Space Gallery at the New Hope Art Center.
Spending time with Seo’s paintings is like spending time with the artist herself. There is an intimacy in her representations that reveals who she is. “I would like to express the story of my soul and my energy in my paintings on the theme of beauty and nature,” she says. She captures the innate beauty of each individual in her portraits of humans, but her love of flowers allows her to do so with them too. She depicts them in glass vases and porcelain pitchers arranged in intimate interiors. In this exhibition you will see lilies and orchids, tulips and lilacs, and always her favorite pink peonies.
Seo painted in watercolors and oils. “My watercolors,” she says, “come from Asian painting skills that I learned starting with a wet brush on white paper. She says she also uses the same initial process for her oil paintings, rarely doing the initial design in pencil. This process, she believes, is what allows her “to remain free and loose with a natural feeling in the final work.”
You will notice this spontaneity in his nautical paintings where you will see sailboats leaning in the wind or an abandoned boat that seems to be waiting on land for the return of its owner. You will see large ships plying rough seas or smaller boats resting in the mud. Its waters are sometimes rough, sometimes calm, sometimes blue or turquoise and sometimes icy gray or multicolored reflecting the sky.
And you will also find this variety in his paintings of landscapes and cityscapes. These works also vary from a painting devoid of detail showing a blue sky on a green earth. An explosion of bright red and alizarin purple at the skyline is used to suggest the shapes of a building and a pair of tall trees. Nearby is a painting of a city street whose buildings are rendered with fine detail in gray and umber.
The exhibit includes rural chalets, a village where pedestrians wander on a sunny day to visit shops, and a quaint sidewalk cafe where dining tables are set up under their umbrellas and amid clusters of colorful flowers. lively.
Seo’s love for painting these floral, land and seascapes is evident but, she says, “My passion is the horse where he brings dynamic energy to my soul.” In several of the paintings on display, she captures the animal’s strength and energetic focus as it gallops gloriously, splashing water, its jockey rising in the stirrups leaning forward, one with the horse. In other paintings, you see the rider and the horse in quieter moments. “Walking on the Track” portrays them in a subdued color palette, and in “Returning to the Barn” you see them in an exquisite representation of light as the rider brings it back.
Remarkable in this exhibition, where every painting could carry this distinction, is “Marshmallow”, a portrait of the head of a white horse made with a true affinity with the animal itself. Her head is tilted and turned slightly towards the viewer, her eyes looking contentedly downward as if awaiting the hand that will gently rest on her neck. Seo’s decision to let the black background sink into the unfinished lower half of the painting underscores Marshmallow’s patiently waiting posture.
Seo talks about how she enjoys painting horses because of their strength, wit, and fluid movements. “The sunny days inspired my landscapes and my understanding of shadows. My nature painting transcends me in nature, my creativity shines through and tells a harmony of natural colors in my paintings. Themes begin with what catches my eye and grabs my attention in all of my paintings and continue to interest me today.
She has again established an art academy where she teaches adults as well as high school students preparing to become art majors in college.
IF YOU ARE GOING TO:
- WHAT: Christine Seo exhibition
- OR: A-Space Gallery, New Hope Arts Center, 2A Stockton Ave., New Hope, Pennsylvania
- WHEN: From Sept. 3 to 26. Schedule: 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, Saturday, Sunday or by reservation. Reception of artists: Saturday September 11 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
- CONTACT: 215-862-9606
