Winter Korean Temple Sketch, Landscape Painting

Winter Korean Temple Sketch, chalk pastel on board

When I look at paintings I have finished, they take me back to the moment I worked on them. It could be a piece of music I was listening to at the time, the struggle I had to create what I wanted, or in this case, the experiences I had in the place I was working.

The bitter, bitter Korean winter was nearly over, and at last, I was able to sit outside to draw without freezing. I headed up into the hills not far from Busan, to the tranquil setting of one of South Korea's many, many Buddhist temples. Enjoying the peace, I settled myself down, with all my materials around me and nearly keeled over with fright when morning prayers began. Far from being calming, they were being broadcast deafeningly over a crackly tanoy, its speakers attached to trees all round me. The sound was bouncing off all the hills and echoing for miles. It was loud.

I worked through it, giving up on listening to my iPod. After 45 minutes, silence descended and I began to work. The monks left me to it, except when wordlessly plying me with coffee and, bizarrely, gobstoppers. 

I loved Korea's temples, and would visit and draw them many times over, at many different times of the year.