Mokwon, Subsoo Lim, is an accomplished Korean ink-brush painting artist with a career spanning 35 years before coming to America 8 years ago. Since her arrival, Mokwon has taught Korean ink-brush painting on a regular basis to Americans and Korean-Americans alike, as it has become her passion to share a centuries-old tradition with a new generation of students in a newly adopted home, U.S.  

Mokwon started teaching brush painting classes at Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design through its Continuing Education Program, but soon expanded her outreach by working with small groups of adult students in a variety of community settings.

In this exhibit, the Korean ink-brush artist Mokwon exhibits her recent work along with the work of her American and Korean students based in Milwaukee and Chicago. 

Ink-brush painting is an art form that has been practiced for well over a thousand years in East Asia.  In Korea it is a tradition that emphasizes the use of primarily black ink on paper to create images that are simple yet elegant and seem to capture, in their meditative clarity, the inner life of nature. 

It isn’t only the unique techniques of painting that the students study; they also learn the kind of Asian aesthetics, culture, and philosophy in which the Korean ink-brush tradition is rooted, such as the formative role of empty space. Korean ink-brush painting draws its power from the irreducible dynamic of its technical finesse and echoes the graceful minimalism that lies at the heart of Buddhism.

For Korean-American students, especially those who left home two or three decades ago, learning ink-brush painting offers a way to remain connected to their cultural roots. As for American students, they learn a set of tools, materials and approaches that are quite different from the Western art tradition.  There is also a larger theme at play in this exhibit. The important work of cultural transmission carried on by Mokwon draws attention to key aesthetic differences between Eastern and Western art, which may be an eye opener for many students. 

The work of Mokwon as artist and teacher has made a significant contribution to the transferring of ideas, values and attitudes from person to person and from generation to generation. This has been the primary task of Mokwon: teaching art as a way of forging learning communities.