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Coloured lines and black and white portraitsCOLOURED LINES AND BLACK AND WHITE PORTRAITS
P.O/Sulli
Jinri lives with songs in her lips and flowers in her hair. Sweet and melodic on the inside and blooming beauty on the outside, that's how Jihoon likes to think of her. With his artistic mind, though, Jihoon thinks of her as a wind, blurred in colours and lines that flow everywhere. Jinri is all white and brown, with hazel colours to paint her with. She's a palette over white skin, and her pink-ish lips are an addition that claims there's a side to her innocence that doesn't belong. When he paints them red, it breaks the colour scheme and Jihoon wonders how he could ever portray her duality in a painting that is dead and motionless. 'Cause Jinri moves in big dancing steps and steady feet and her legs are just the perfect level of chubby. Jihoon is reminded of Rubens but it isn't quite like that. Jinri doesn't fit the classical type of beauty because Jinri is a kind of beauty herself. And with no references, no influences, Jihoon doesn't even know where to start when he brushes lightly the white canvas with his brush, only to come up with nothing but a coloured line. A coloured line that is just too bold, dull and unsteady to be a part of Jinri anyway.
Jihoon dreams Jinri in black and white. In his dreams, she's just a specturm of grey colours and vivid white. Black hair and black eyes. He supposes that a black and white Jinri would be less unachievable, more real and tangible. More paintable. But when he sees her and she's all colour and textures he can't come across as to why he's not allowed to dream her like that, why his head doesn't deserve a coloured Jinri. Jihoon tries to paint her in colours and traces to make her his, hoping that maybe, if the colours are right in his canvas, they could be in his dreams as well.
But Jihoon knows well enough Jinri is no one's. She's soft as an aquarel but her face is painted with pastel colouring and her hair is achrylics and Jihoon has never been good with mixed technique. It's not really his fault, he's just a student, he needs to improve his drawing, his painting, his every artistical trait. Jihoon knows one thing though: you can't paint what you can't imagine, and Jinri's either been a rush of coloured lines or a black and white portrait. She's never been a coloured version of herself in Jihoon's mind, remaining as untouchable and ethereal as always.
Sometimes Jihoon just wants to cry. When he slids the brush across the canvas for the millionth time trying to erase what he's drawn, ashamed of even trying. Because no matter how many times, or how hard he tries to, he never gets closer to what he really wants to paint. Ironic, an art student not being able to paint. It keeps him up at night, restless, when colours line up in his head, one right after the other and none seem to be the exact ones he's looking for. No colour is ever colour enough to paint Jinri. Jinri is a colour herself, and Jihoon doesn't know how to grasp her and keep her.
So he grasps someone else, someone he paints with ease, with steady hands and concentrated stare. Someone he has learnt to memorize, from head to toe. Coloured in blue, most of the time, and sometimes in yellow and purple. She's a nice girl, all acrylichs and bold brushes with short and defined lines. Jihoon thinks he can settle with being Matisse but, deep inside, he knows he'll always aim for Rubens.
That's until he descovers Jinri is also a Caravaggio, and a Goya, with clareobscure techique, with shadows, not so perfect and not so bright. To Jihoon, Jinri becomes every piece of art ever made and nothing about him will ever live up to that. Not his hand that traces her face with long , not the paint he uses in her hair nor the pencil he draws her with at the corners of his notebook. Jihoon realises he'll never be able to paint Jinri in colour, because his skills will never be enough.
But he's good enough for a Matisse, so Matisse it is. Because painting the ordinary is way better than not being able to paint the extraordinary at all.
Sepia colour fills his mind when he thinks of youth, with vintage filters and rusted corners. Matisse is gone now, art has evolved, painting has evolved, from dripping to darts to many other techniques. When they ask him why he centered the last part of his work in black and white portraits Jihoon answers that it was the one thing he felt he had left to do. But it's a lie.
Because at the back of his studio, behind all his work and his sketches, there will always be that canvas, drawn in black over white, waiting for the truth to be coloured, but without a painter capable to do so.
ANNOTATIONS:
Rubens (Peter Paul Rubens): painter from he 16th/17th century known for his style which enfasized movement, colour and sensuality.
Matisse (Henri Émile Benoît Matisse): french painter from the 19th century known for his use of colour and his original and fluid use of drawing.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio): roman painter from the late 16th early 17th century considered the first big exponent of barroque painting.
Goya (Francisco de Goya): spanish painter from the 18th century. One of his most famous works are the "black paintings" collection.
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