Kim Yong-jae is known as a 'mountain painter.' However, before the 'mountain painter', he was a 'riverside painter' or other names would have possibly gone well with him: a 'bell painter' when he painted minutely the object like Bongdeok-Sa bell, 'barrage painter' when he painted Manderi or Punchball scratched by the wars, caterpillar traces of tanks, and areas for barrage.
Painting riverside, he saw a mountain at a distance on the opposite side of the river. Not interested in distant mountains in blue tone looked plain and smooth, he painted the ones on the outskirts of Seoul like Mt. Dobong for a while. Then, his interest moved to Mt. Seorak, Mt. Jiri and Mt. Taebaik. As boring wholes with a gimlet, his advance without a stepping back went on and on.
After several zooming ins, the mountain appears as a main character. A blue mountain. The blue and mountain are not separated but make one world... This was what Kim found in Mont Blanc in the early 80s, where he experienced the mountain not as an individual one but as a tone, as a blue mountain. It was a huge mutation of the whole world. Since then, he has been a 'mountain painter.' In his paintings, there are longing, concentration and desire for accomplishment more than the physical zooming ins. The word which can explain this is 'Shangri-La.'
In Kim Yung-Zai's paintings, blue mountains function as anchors, which draw people's eyes and hold on to them. Sometimes, it appears as a huge silhouette, lines of mountains, symphony of rapidly changing sunlight and weather, and dreamlike snow covered mountain. This impression is followed by the curiosity about artist's motive of the painting and his working process. Then, some alternatives come to mind; the way he uses pictorials or photographs in a composition, sketches directly or complete the sketch in his studio, keeps the world in his mind and pours into the canvas after ripening it in himself until crawling on his stomach.
Kim's impulse to see mountains from nearer and higher places came from the thought he has to see the range, branch and root of the mountain in whole. From near, we can see the mystic atmosphere sprout out from the valley and peak. From the high place, we can find that it comprises the whole from the brigade commander, division commander, commanding general of an army corps to the company commander, platoon leader, squad leader and squad soldiers. How we can see the highs and lows of its power in photographs or pictorials. Kim Yong-jae's mountain sketches are excellent in this way.
Through his recent works, we guess how the subject matter he has been holding since 80s, the mountain, has developed and in what kind of backgrounds and thoughts it is based on. Mountain as the subject matter. Sketching in the air by helicopter or light plane is the episode which shows how the concentration picking as an awl and the world zoomed in pierce the mountain and turn it into his.
In 1995, Kim sketched Himalaya in helicopter for the first time, which means before that he might have gone into Nepal from India and painted Himalaya carrying tools and walking hard. It shows his mind pursuing the object affinity that he tried to sketch watching Mt. Everest, Mt. Annapurna, and Mt. Manaslu riding expensive vehicles; light planes costed about thousand dollars an hour, helicopters were 2 thousand an hour.
Sketches are mostly the photo sketches using slide films. He getting a photo which contained the feeling that his angle became one with the mountains, it becomes directly connected to an artwork. Therefore, he has never used any other's photo materials. And sometimes even within the 9 hundreds of film rolls, there are nothing that could be referenced. Because the work is accomplished when the mountain replies to his radio wave.
As an electric charging battery, Kim Yung-Zai gets energy from mountains. When the impression fades away, he should return to Himalaya and Kilimanjaro. There is no one who will sub for him. Walking and taking a rest when he is tired, taking planes or helicopters when he cannot walk, he should go. And one day, when he really cannot go there by any means, only the air that a man had kept in his lung and put into the canvas will deliver his passion and on the spot spirit to people who sees his work.