FAMILY 2005
This was simply a drawing of my wife Amy and our two kids, Sun Su (2 1/2 years here) and Ooseung (almost 1 year old). The baby girl, Ooseung, is drawn a little older and larger than she was at this age. She's wearing a hanbok with designs from a famous Corean painting of ssireum wrestlers (by Kim Hong Do, 18th century). I have plans to put her into a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class when she's old enough (the three girls in my class now are damn good). Her oversized and wrapped fist is derived from a memorable recent trip to the hospital in which she got dehydrated from a "stomach virus" and required an IV, which had to be wrapped.
Sun Su sports a dark suit and darker demeanor. He looked a little forlorn or concerned in the original photo and I tried to capture this expression. In his left hand, he is holding a Hello Kitty doll in a hanbok - an actual doll given out by McDonald's during the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Corea (I bought one off of ebay). It's used as a voodoo-type doll here with two chopsticks sticking in it, with a few more waiting in Sun Su's coat pocket. The dragon serpent in his right hand belongs to one of the Four Guardian Kings (sacheonwang) that are frequently seen in Buddhist temples in Corea. (The actual guardian statue carries the dragon in the right hand, and the dragon's wish stone in the left hand.)
My lovely wife Amy is the matriarchal figure in the back, representing my fictional Medea Sin. The pose is taken from Gustav Klimt's 1907 painting aptly named "Medicine." I remember doing a report on that painting back in college and Klimt's works left an indelible impression on me. Amy is wearing Corean empress robes and hair ornaments. Draped over her shoulders I included some medical symbology - cancer/crab, heart/cardiology, brain stem/neurology (similar to my 2000 Medea Sin drawing).
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