My Conversation with Sunny Choi on Body Language
“I like to capture body language. I started taking pictures of these girls (models). I would take about fifty pictures of a girl. Then I would select the three or four that were somehow the most the most compelling to me. I would base my painting on those. I was fascinated with how people who knew the models would say “oh that [bodily expression] is so characteristic of her [the model]“.
Her works display a finely tuned sense of the traces of personality in a woman's style and bodily expression.
Some Indiscernable Quality
It was as if the indiscernable quality that made each photograph compelling to her was that the model’s body language stamped the photograph with some core element of the model’s personality. Successful art is always a process of communication. Seeing that other people recognized what her work communicated, she began to “hone in” on this.
Her Career of Design in Fashion
Having been a fashion designer for over twenty years Sunny Choi had a natural inclination to style her subjects; choosing the lighting, clothes, and other appearance aspects of photographs on which she based her work. Now she finds more interest in letting the woman choose her own clothes … with the exception of black clothing because it offers little variation in tone to paint. In the absence of a stylist the model will of course choose clothes according to her own inclinations … and as a result, in so far as the subjects’s body language opens a window to who she is, the clothes help to open that window.
Stylishness of Nudes
“This is why I don’t like painting nudes … the clothes show who the person is. I used to ask my husband … can a woman be stylish in the nude? I think the answer is yes in a way … I saw a nude photograph of a model taken by designer Helmutt Knutt; the way she looked at the camera was definitely stylish … admittedly she had very sensually styled hair … now thinking back I’m not sure whether she had sensuality or style … but she had a definite presence.
Paintings and her Embrace of Style
Sunny posing with friends while a photo is being taken by her daughter. Her daughter is the subject of some of her work.
It is perhaps that open embrace of style that makes Sunny Choi’s work unique. Both her choice of subject and her embrace of style are characteristic of her work. When she began painting thirty years ago the subjects of her work then, as now, were women. But back then she painted with a more oriental decorative style; flowers, costumes, etc. Two years ago she embarked on pursuing this current style. And at this moment she loves the balance in life between career woman, mother, and artist. It is this style and sense of balance that define her at this moment.
Negative Space
Perhaps having a sense of balance gives solid ground from which to explore. Talking about the negative space in her painting she says “the negative space … now [there] I can go wild. I leave that area [for my spontaneous expression]. It’s a very spontaneous, very free type of approach. Almost like chinese calligraphy. I love that juxtaposition. I think it gives my painting a more contemporary look than old fashioned figure painting with a traditional background”.
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