I know that everybody loves the Rembrandt works but to me, as an artist, my favorite part is always the background.
My name is Il Lee.
My fellow artists call me the “ballpoint pen artist.” As I arrived in New York in 1977, the next day I came to the Met Museum. It’s really the first time to see those masterpieces in my life. In the museum we see thousands of different people in paintings. However the gallery with the Rembrandt work is very special. It is a much more personal relationship between the work and the viewer.
I know that everybody loves the Rembrandt works but to me, as an artist, my favorite part is always the background. I love the quiet, clean, dark, open spaces which allow me time to reflect. There is a subtle sensibility, which in some ways evokes traditional Asian landscape paintings that depict darkened forests with foggy streams in the dim mountains.
Those backgrounds look like simple, dark space, but to create such a space requires a lot of mixing of different dark colors to get the perfect tone. Repetitive brushstrokes are creating layers and depth, and create the deep, somber feelings and silence.
It reminds me of my paintings, my drawings. For over twenty years I have used only black ink. I overlay countless ballpoint pen lines to create depth and movement with repetitive gesture.
Rembrandt used dark colors to emphasize the bright face and ruffs, and bright hand. It is almost like a light is coming from within the figure himself. In this way, I think the painting is able to give a religious feeling. The simple composition of the pictures, the somber mood of the figures, the bright faces, even the black frames, create the feeling of a shrine.
There is a connection, a personal connection that either I bring to the painting or the painting is able to steal inside of me.
