Life becomes deeper the moment you stop in front of a painting.
A Walk Through the Arts and Humanities with Art Storytellers
★★Highly recommended by national mentor instructor Kim Mi-kyung★★

Have you ever felt comforted by a single painting in the midst of a complex daily life? [When a Painting Speaks] is not simply a book about art appreciation; it's a book that allows you to reflect on yourself through art and adjust the pace of your life.
Artist Lee Su-jeong, who has been active as an art education content planner and art storyteller, delicately interprets the inner world of humans and the emotions of the times through her paintings.

The book unfolds a rich artistic narrative, connecting myth, literature, and historical backgrounds, centered around 30 artists and over 50 works.
We encounter the faces of emotion in Goya's despair, Van Gogh's loneliness, and the traces of the times left behind by Courbet and Mantegna.
Holbein, Rubens, Raphael, and Michelangelo endured suffering in the name of power and God, resisting and praying through their paintings, while Frida Kahlo, Chagall, and Suzanne Valadon transformed their suffering into art by capturing their lives of love and loss on canvas.
In addition, the Pre-Raphaelites, Millais, and Hayez depict myths and literature, showing the moment when a painting becomes a story and a language.


The author has given lectures on art to numerous corporations, institutions, art enthusiasts, and the general public, focusing on interpreting art not simply as an object of appreciation, but as a “language for interpreting life.”
His stories, which pursue deeper emotions and narratives than the splendid history of art, contain sincerity beyond the paintings.
So this book makes you stop and take a second look at life at the moment when a single picture speaks to you.
Readers will discover themselves through paintings and experience a journey of artistic humanities that reflects on the 'here and now.'

Artists each drew their own maps in their own way.
The map captures the questions they had, the emotions they felt, and even the atmosphere of the times.
Now, with that map in hand, we embark on a quiet, profound journey through the time and space that the artists have traversed.
Art is not a special experience that comes to us suddenly one day, but rather a language of everyday life that already stays with us affectionately.
As long as we have eyes to perceive it and a heart to feel it, we can encounter art anytime, anywhere.

--- p.11

Proving that even if life is full of wounds and deprivation, flowers can bloom even in the gaps.
That is the miracle of art that Van Gogh left us.
His work seems to say, 'I was lonely and had a hard time just like you.
It comes across as the confession of an old friend whispering, 'But I never gave up.'
When we each have to bear the burden of our own difficult lives, let us look to [The Starry Night Over the Rhone].
If you stand quietly next to Van Gogh, who is looking up at the sky with tears in his eyes, he will calmly say this.
'Life is like that.
Joy and sorrow, love and hurt, they all pass by like a river flowing quietly under the stars.
But look, even in the darkness, the stars still shine.
So it's okay... it's okay.'
--- p.31

Suzanne Valadon's masterpiece, [The Blue Room], depicts a woman wearing striped pants and smoking a cigarette, lying sideways on a bed with blue bedding.
When we first encounter this painting, we feel unfamiliar.
This is because her posture is reminiscent of poses traditionally used for female nudes in Western art history, but is far from a sensual or submissive image.
She exudes the aura of a 'strong older sister' these days.
Her ample body, loose clothing, and appearance, which seem to have been etched with the hardships of life, exude a sense of dignity rather than shabbiness.
She doesn't seem like she'd bow her head in front of anyone, but she shows that the power of humanity itself exists without idealizing or beautifying it on canvas.
This is the power of Susan's paintings.

--- p.154

A painting is not simply a visual artifact.
The essence of a work of art cannot be fully explained by its visible colors, shapes, and formative beauty alone.
A single work of art is the artist's life flowing from his fingertips, a record imbued with the air of the times he breathed and the time he lived.
In other words, it is an artistic legacy that contains the entirety of the creator's 'lived time' and the reverberations of existence.
But Vermeer's life was not in Meyheren's paintings.
It was a sand castle built on the name 'Vermeer', and the moment that name was erased, the emotion also crumbled.
--- p.308

When a picture speaks to us, we must stop before it.
Because those words are ultimately born in our hearts.
So now, after you close this book, I hope you will occasionally stop quietly in front of a painting.
Let us listen to that world of silence that contains more than words.
I hope that through art we can imagine someone's life and look into our own hearts.
So that small but solid changes can permeate your daily life.
And someday, I hope you can talk to yourself in front of the painting.

--- p.333