Park Hang-ryul

Park Hang-ryul (; born 20 February 1950) is a South Korean artist famous for his paintings and poems. He held a total of 31 solo exhibitions and participated in more than 100 group exhibitions around the world including Korea, the United States, Japan, Belgium, England and many other countries.

Early life He was born in Gimcheon, South Korea on 20 February 1950. He captured the country-ness in his drawings. He also met his cousin, who influenced his future paintings, there. He spent much time with him, going to nearby mountains and lakes and reading books together. They became very close and their relationship continued when they both moved back to Seoul. Having returned to Seoul, his father finally allowed him to attend Seoul Arts high school. During high school, the death of this close cousin from a spinal lesion and the memory of being with her in the country became sources of inspiration going forward. After the arts high school, he graduated from Seoul National University in 1974. He received his master's degree in Painting in Hongik University in 1982. Since then, he has been teaching at Sejong University as a professor of Painting.

Artistic style He used to be an Informel artist using minimal forms and geometric abstractions. His style changed after his first poetical works were released in 1991. In his travels to Venice and Paris, he realized the beauty of connection between humans and birds by watching a man feeding birds around him and a bird sitting on top of someone's head.

Flower Of all the flowers, he draws the Japanese apricot blossom the most often because of the purity of its endurance. Instead of depicting details of flowers, he draws the image of the flower metaphorically. Just like birds in his paintings, flowers are located in the background.

Person For him, drawing a person means drawing himself. So he only draws one person per drawing. In many of his works, they are portraits drawn in profile. He spends a long time on drawing the facial expression. He draws people in silence with their mouths closed. They express resignation, indifference and the absence of necessity of words.

Rainbow-colored Hanbok From his inspiration of traditional Korean motives, Hang-Ryul drew his first painting of a girl wearing hanbok, entitled Rainbow-colored Hanbok . He realized that there was no artist who drew . There were some drawings of men wearing Korean traditional overcoat but not skirt and jacket. Since then, he has continued to draw a girl wearing especially in a rainbow-color scheme. It became his signature.