[One Thousand Characters a Day] Author Jo Wonjae's 'Life Shines Through Art' <4>

Editor's NoteAll artists who have created extraordinary artistic worlds always start with very rough early works. However, they were not afraid to face their own roughness. They saw countless repeated failures, mistakes, and trial-and-error processes as necessary steps to realize their dreams. From there, they learned something and moved little by little, very little by little, every day, toward "some unknown point they dreamed of." They did not expect perfection or success from the beginning. They just kept repeating and completing their work. At a certain point when this process was sufficiently matured, something extraordinary naturally began to emerge from within. Word count: 1074 characters.

Looking around, we often see people who fear facing their own roughness. To them, it means failure and frustration, exposing their weaknesses to others and inflicting great wounds on their self-esteem. So they dare not try anything new. They fear it might be rough, or end in failure. Because that would be too embarrassing and painful. However, only when rough things are repeatedly sustained and accumulate to an astonishing degree can something extraordinary begin to reveal itself from within.

We often call artists who create extraordinary works "geniuses." And we assume they were different from ordinary people from birth. Sometimes, the title "genius" is used as a marketing rhetoric to make someone a hero or a great person, like framing Picasso as a genius. But we tend to forget how many rough drawings Picasso made astonishingly from his childhood. Picasso’s rough efforts accumulated and became his unique mastery, and his works naturally evolved into something extraordinary. Roughness is the only path toward the extraordinary.

Is this only true for painting? Everything we do is rough at first. Like my cooking, for example. This is the point where art and life connect, and why all acts of life can become art. The obsession that things must be perfect or successful from the start becomes a mental shackle that prevents humans from taking even one step toward the unknown world. The beginning of all things is naturally rough. There are countless mistakes and trials. We learn, gain insights and inspiration from them. Then we reflect that in the next attempt and improve little by little. As we mature little by little, something that anyone would call extraordinary inevitably begins to pour out from the one who was once rough. The path from roughness to the extraordinary is the path we take to practice art in life. Just as C?zanne walked that path and cultivated art. If we choose to walk that path, we become artists, and our lives become art.

－Jo Wonjae, Life Shines Through Art, Dasan Chodang, 18,800 KRW

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.