Kim Jung Gi passed a few days ago, I was kinda out of it yesterday so I found out rather late last night, and it's slowly been hitting me throughout the day. For folks who aren't familiar with the art world that much, he was one of the most well known and beloved artists in the worldwide art community. A master of working with ink he could create these massive murals full of people and props and things happening seemingly out of thin air, as he didn't really do sketches or block in layouts or anything of the sort. He'd just start with a random shape and it would turn out to be a hand of a person tripping over something that would turn out to be a bucket someone else in the image left and so on. To call him talented would be an incredible disservice to the man as he was a hard worker who spent years honing his craft and he encouraged others to do so as well if they wanted to approach his level of skill. I've never had the chance to meet the man (he'd been to some events a few years after I'd stopped attending them) but everyone who had the fortune of doing so had nothing but positive to say about the man.
He was only 47 years old, left a family behind too. And pretty much the entire art community is in mourning, folks recounting their encounters with him, how he changed their lives, how he inspired them, doing art tributes of him, of his work, it's incredibly heartwarming and at the same time so goddamn sad to see.