hris Oh began making art as a child in Portland, Oregon, copying pictures from encyclopedias and taking inspiration from the plants and rocks his parents brought home from re-create, on the marbled inner covers of antique books, seven scenes by the sixteenth-century artist Pieter Brueghel the Elder and his son, Pieter Brueghel the Younger. Five are drawn from the surviving works of Brueghel the Elder’s 1565 “months of the year” cycle, , , , , and —each a portrait of labor or leisure amid the landscapes of winter, early spring, early summer, late summer, and autumn. In lieu of a lost sixth painting depicting the sowing of late spring, Oh referred to Brueghel the Younger’s (ca. 1633), an oil-on-panel work based on an ink drawing by his father. The seventh painting in returns us to the winter valley of with a re-creation of the Elder’s (1566). After constructing preliminary designs in Photoshop, Oh painted each scene at his desk, with the help of a magnifying glass.
