Welcoming Blessings: New Works by Meekyung Shin

We're pleased to introduce new works by Meekyung Shin. She works in the Korean minhwa tradition, where symbols like animals, flowers, and nature elements carry meaning. Minhwa is an art form "for the people"—bestowing blessings and beauty in everyday households.

The Welcoming Blessings Series

Meekyung has given us five new woodblock pieces from her Welcoming Blessings series. The message of the series is that we need not sit still and wait for our blessings. Instead, we should step forward with a hopeful heart to welcome them. According to Meekyung, blessings are a way of living. They’re something we discover for ourselves in everyday life and cultivate with care.

These new pieces feature a tiger, rooster, horse, and rabbit. In traditional minhwa, these are some of the meanings of those animals:

• Rooster: the bringer of light and new beginnings, protection from evil, and career success
• Horse: forward momentum, career promotion, freedom, success, obstacles clearing to open your path
• Tiger: sacred guardian and protector, also sometimes portrayed in whimsical or awkward ways as a satire on authority figures
• Rabbit: a highly auspicious symbol of longevity, marital harmony, and abundant prosperity

In Meekyung’s series, each of these animals carries its own story of good fortune, living freely together in harmony with the rhythms of nature. She says she discovers fragments of blessing in the way they surrender to nature's flow and breathe in harmony with one another.

In her own words:

"Long ago, people inscribed symbols of longevity and good fortune with an earnest yet joyful wish for a hundred forms of well-being. That same spirit awakens today at my fingertips…

The moment I stand before the woodblock and take the carving knife in my hand, the anticipation within me begins to take tangible form. The marks of the blade cutting deeply along the grain, and the traces of time accumulating layer by layer upon the woodblock, become the beautiful grain of happiness that we, too, must patiently build throughout our lives."

The Sehwa Tradition of Gifting Art

Minhwa refers to all traditional Korean folk paintings:

• Min (민 / 民): "people," "folk," or "commoners"
• Hwa (화 / 畫): "painting" or "drawing"

Within minhwa, there's a subgenre called sehwa—talismanic folk paintings created and exchanged specifically to bestow blessings at the New Year:

• Se (세 / 歲): "year" or "new year"
• Hwa (화 / 畫): "painting" or "drawing"

Literally translated, sehwa means "New Year's painting."

While Meekyung Shin's artworks aren't meant to be sehwa, and it isn't currently the New Year, her new works arriving in September feel like a good moment to give a nod to the tradition of gifting art as blessings for a new beginning.

In the US, September brings the start of a new school year. It's the time when people in your life might be beginning a new course of study or a path to a new career. It's also a season when many people buy new homes or move apartments.

Imagine gifting someone an art print for their new home, or to mark a new school year, filled with symbolic meaning and blessings.

Choosing the Right Gift Piece

The rooster or horse might be perfect for someone moving into a new chapter in school or career—the rooster to bring light and success into the new beginning, the horse as a wish for obstacles to clear and forward movement to come easily.

The rabbit might be perfect for someone in a new home or entering a new chapter in family life, such as getting married or hoping to have children. It's also a fitting longevity and abundance symbol for anyone seeking a long, prosperous life.

And the tiger. Meekyung has two tiger pieces in this collection:

• Welcoming Blessings #9: a serenely sleeping tiger for guardianship and protection, accompanied by a rooster for positive energy at the dawn of a new day.
  
  
• Welcoming Blessings #3: a whimsical tiger with leaping fish for protection and success. In Korean culture, a fish leaping out of the water symbolizes a student passing exams, a professional climbing the ranks, or more broadly, breakthroughs and triumph over adversity. The fish represent the ambition to succeed, while the tiger offers the protection and security to get there.

A note on the ideas above: these are our own suggestions, not direct from the artist, and not fixed traditional readings. 

They're one way to find meaning in these pieces, offered in the same spirit Meekyung brings to her own carving. She isn't just reproducing centuries-old symbols; she's putting her own wisdom and spirit into them, so they hold something of how she has learned to live well.

That's the invitation for you too. Take these ideas as a starting point, and let the piece mean what it means to you, or for whomever you're gifting it to.

Stepping Forward

This brings us back to Meekyung’s mission with the Welcoming Blessings series: to step forward and welcome blessings into our lives, and to share them with others.

Spread joy and welcome blessings into your life or someone else's, with Meekyung Shin's new “Welcoming Blessings” art pieces. Prints are available on canvas and paper. View them here.