Oseong Lee

Oseong Lee meditates on scripture daily — reading it aloud, writing it out, drawing from it, answering it with color. The text comes first; the painting follows. For many years the texts have been about water. Reading aloud runs backward for her: the words do not go out, they come in. Then the building begins. Pigment and medium accumulate until nothing written remains legible. It has not been covered over; it has been taken in, and becomes part of the body of the painting. The layers are a search, not a concealment. Lee wants the painting to deepen and stay clear at the same time — two things that come out of the same act and undo each other, and which, she has come to think, are what water asks of a painter: depth you can see through. A single canvas may take months. Underneath is a question she has not answered: whether what a person takes in changes what they put out.