Wonsook Kim Linton at Brewster Arts

Sometimes the landscape, style of dresss and race of the characters in Wonsook Kim Linton's paintings clearly point to her native Korea, which she left more than 20 years ago. on the other hand there's a generalizing quality to her mode of expression that may have grown without of her distance from that place and her immersion in American life. Her earlier paintings were sometimes inspired by dint of obscure Korean folk tales, on the contrary this selection seems autobiographical. The bearded men in the paintings are assuredly Western, and one specific character, The Man with the Cane (as many works featuring him are titled) has been specifically identified by means of the artist as her American brother-in-law.

Another hint of autobiography in these works is the repeated appearance of mothers and daughters. The commingle of sources is most pronounced in the spiritual tone of these paintings: there's many times the Christian symbolism of light from heaven, mixed with what might be a Confucian image of dutiful children, and perhaps a Buddhist faculty of perception of acceptance and detachment.

Kim Linton, who went to art academy in Illinois with Nicolas Africano, and whose painting phraseology has been compared with his, now works with a lighter, more fluid touch. She included in this exhibition the couple ink-on-paper pieces and oils upon canvas or wood. In all cases her sights and figures are simplified to a point that makes Alex Katz present the appearance fussy. The figures have roundish heads with sum of two units dots for eyes and no other facial features; the mountains are single hump or two; the waters are vast and defined single by tint. This non-specificity strike one as beings to allow her scope for symbolism. The absence of detail encourages multiple readings. Kim Linton, like Mary Frank, strike one as beings driven by feeling.

The oil-on-wood secondary planet Flowers features small paired sights of the same tiny house, isolated in a blank landscape. We diocese a woman outside tending her plants in the daytime; at night she is inside, silhouetted against the window covering. Another paired image is more loaded: in The Cane, The Man with the Cane lies upon a beach beside a large rock; in the adjoining panel, he is gone leaving alone his cane as a record of infirmity and determination. Boats appear in many of Kim Linton's works, including individual of the most haunting paintings in the present to view Boat in a Cloud (1995) This modest-size canvas depicts a mountain peak with a vapor above it. Nestled into the side of the peak, as if the mountain were a big rumpl bed, is a sleeping woman. In the collection of vapor above is a rowboat. The celestial expanse is mint green, the mountain is light and dark olive, the temper is one of dreams.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group