Something Like Happiness

Soony Eunsoon Seo
Something Like Happiness


I originally planted sunflower seeds in my garden for dreaming sunny day pictures. One day I faced their soundless new green up-risings from the dark soil while I had been busy with my daily life. It was the most wonderful spiritual moment to have their green “Hellos!” from the ground. At that moment, just one question popped into my mind: What made them spring from the dark ground? I had watched them in stormy spring, hot summer, heavy fall and frozen winter. They had been through a series of rainy, windy, dry, snowy, and sunny days which is similar to my life journey. Sometimes, I have met uncertain fear when making art. What is a new challenge to making art in a routine daily life? Through that experience, I learned a lesson from my sunflower standing through four seasons, which is that I have to put my new seeds into my painting ground without fear by just doing, standing, and blooming.

I have started to experiment with mono printing which is a technique that I had never used in my work. Mono printing is characterized by its spontaneity, originality and its combination of printmaking, painting and drawing media. My approach has been intentionally rendered to grab psychological appeal that's difficult to analyze in words but universal to all of us in black and white color. I have been interested in creating metaphors to say something profound or simply to communicate with people in an abstract way. The process of making mono printing also has rainy, windy, dry, snowy, and sunny days. I like that mono printing gives me a more accidental and spontaneous result. These kinds of accidental and spontaneous results are “Something Like Happiness” in my life.