Artist:S. Sam Park
Title: San Gimignano
Edition: Limited Edition Hand Enhanced Giclee on Canvas to Artist Signed to 195
Image size: 30" x 40"
About the Artist: Having followed, accross three continents, his dream to drink from the wellspring of Impressionism, S. Sam Park arose from sleep to greet a cool mid-June morning in the small French Village of Vallauris, one of many that dot the coastline of Provence. After sharing a simple breakfast of crisp baguette, fresh made orange juice and fruit with his wife Jennifer and young son Se-June, he gathered his brushes, easel, canvas, and set out on foot to find the spot he decided to paint the evening before. This was one of two daily, mirror-like rituals that defined his simple life in the seaside town. Standing between the azure sky and the azure sea, Park could feel the sun on his face as he took in the beauty of the countryside before him. While Gauguin had traveled halfway around the world to Tahiti, to get away from a France he found too polluted with civilization, Park had traveled halway around the world to get there. He found that the warm hillsides and seasides of the South of France rivaled Gauguin's description of the South Seas. "You don't need to look for poetry here," Gauguin had written. "It is there for all to see, and all you need to evoke it is to give your dreams their head." Turning his attention to the blank cnvas on his easel, Park started painting. He began as always, with the sky. If I can capture the sky, from whose light all color flows, I know the rest of the picture will fall into place," Park related in recent conversation. "Next I paint the sea. Finally, I fill in that which lies between." The internal prism through which Park refracts the scene before him produces a soft, romantic light, a manifestation of the sense of harmony and serenity that Park seeks to experience and convey. While some aritsts seek to challenge and confront the viewer, Park seeks to reassure. Soon the canvas is filled with beautiful, refreshing, invigorating color, as if you could feel the gentle breezes that are blowing in from the Mediterranean. It has not been an easy juouney to reach this point in his life. Besides the usual obstacles to success as an artist, Park had to overcome the strident resitance of his traditional-minded Korean family. For five generations, the extended Park family had only one son. Sung Sam Park was the only son for his generation, and as such shouldered the burdens and expectations of a proud family. "Be an engineer, or something, anything respectable," his father had exhorted him. But young Sam would not be deterred of dissuaded from his sense of destiny.