Genie Kim’s exquisite paintings and porcelain vases explore the nature of healing

I firmly believe in the healing power of art, and now more than ever, we need to heal," says Genie Kim.

And healing, she says, is what mothers do, whether the mother is a human one or Mother Tree, the source of all life.

Kim, a mother, painter and potter, was born in South Korea and settled in Canada in 1998. A graduate of the School of Fine Arts, Hongik University in Seoul, she now exhibits extensively throughout southern Ontario.

In Mother Tree, a superb exhibition at Carnegie Gallery, she explores, through her paintings and porcelain vases, how motherhood connects humans and nature.

Kim's paintings are linked by similar images such as trees, flowers, cats, and fish. Maternal associations pop up in birds nesting and whales accompanied by their calves. Domesticity gets a nod with tiny houses, furniture and laundry hanging on a clothesline.

Kim's human figures often morph into Mother Tree. These are reduced to the upper part of a face with hair that shapes itself into a tree trunk.

I usually start with a big picture in mind, and block out the basic composition, based on concept sketches," Kim says. But as I start working on the piece, according to the atmosphere or mood that catches me, I add or change many details as they come to mind. So the final result can often be quite different from the original sketch."

In Mother Tree: Mother's Chair," Mother Tree's face sits at the bottom of the painting. She is flanked by white lotus flowers. The lotus flowers and the tiny flowers that surround them are inspired by traditional Korean patterns.

I have adapted many of them in my individual style," Kim says.

She likens the strands of hair to the annual growth rings of a tree.

Those rings are the traces and scars of the passage of time, just like the wrinkles around my mother's eyes."

The hair appropriately narrows into a kind of tree trunk which grows into flowered blue branches. The top of the foliage forms a flat surface, capping a shape that resembles a chalice or footed bowl. Such a shape comes naturally to Kim, who also makes ceramic vessels.

The flat surface supports a tiny striped chair. A whale and her calf swim on the right, surrounded by dots and lines reminiscent of star constellation patterns.

I recall watching a documentary in which a mother whale was breastfeeding its young one," she says. I was deeply moved by seeing this. So in my paintings, the whales typically show the relationship of mother and child, and often appear in a dimension beyond the ocean, and perhaps even beyond the sky."

Kim's way of painting is rooted in traditional Korean techniques that involve applying many translucent layers of paint.

In my adaptation of this tradition, I use western hybrids of acrylic and gouache to apply multiple thin layers to aim at the same depth of colour. I start with a black base and progressively apply brighter tones."

In contrast to the rich purples, blues, and greens of the paintings, Kim's wheel-thrown and hand-pinched vases are pale, but they too focus on Mother Tree. Unevenly spaced, thin vertical lines suggest the texture of tree trunks, or strands of hair. Parts of heads lie flat on the surface. They are complemented by white three-dimensional flowers with orange or blue centres.

These flowers with wonderfully simplified circular shapes are Kim's invention.

I make these flowers from white clay (porcelain). Clay comes from Mother Earth," she says. My first subject to receive a flower was my own mother. I myself was the next recipient. And after that my close friends.

I wanted to give all of us the healing power that comes from Nature, from Earth, from Mother."

Regina Haggo, art historian, public speaker, curator, YouTube video maker and former professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, teaches at the Dundas Valley School of Art.