Information
I am a Korean American visual artist exploring how memory, family, and lived experience shape who we become. Working primarily in oil paint and at times incorporating materials such as handmade paper, fabric, wood, and thread, I create figurative and mixed-media works that reflect on the emotional currents of everyday life. Much of my practice centers on my three daughters and my own family history, tracing the subtle ways relationships shift across years, continents, and changing identities.
Having grown up in Korea and now living in California, I navigate multicultural experience through intimate, existential questions rather than direct cultural symbolism. I am drawn to the quiet moments—how a gesture, a childhood photograph, or a fleeting expression reveals something about belonging, loss, resilience, or the passage of time.
My work continues to evolve through ongoing study in painting, mixed media, and contemporary art. Above all, I aim to create images that hold honesty, tenderness, and a deep engagement with the changing nature of family and self.
My work begins with the intimate, everyday moments that quietly shape a life: a child lost in thought, the tender distance between siblings, the warmth of sunlight caught on someone’s shoulder. I paint the people closest to me—my daughters, my family, myself—not as portraits, but as points of reflection. These scenes become places where memory, identity, and the passage of time overlap, revealing how relationships evolve in subtle, almost imperceptible ways.
As a Korean American artist, I had a strong responsibility to carry cultural representation in my practice. That sense of duty was deep and sincere, rooted in the desire to honor the heritage that formed me. Over time, however, I realized that identity does not always need to be articulated through symbols or overt cultural markers. Instead, it can exist quietly—woven into the way I see, the way I understand love and care, the way I mark time and distance. This shift opened a different kind of freedom in my work. I began to understand that the emotional truths I follow—questions about belonging, memory, and the fragility of human ties—are inherently connected to who I am, even when they are not explicitly cultural.
Much of my practice centers on this internal landscape: how memory shapes identity, how time alters relationships, and how the familiar can suddenly feel unfamiliar. I am drawn to moments when the past and present coexist—when an old photograph reveals how far two people have grown apart, or when a child’s expression changes so quickly that it feels like witnessing a quiet transformation. These are the spaces where I recognize myself most clearly, and where the act of painting becomes a way to hold onto something that might otherwise slip away.
While oil paint is at the core of my process, materials such as handmade paper, fabric, thread, and natural elements often find their way into the work. These additions create textures that echo the complexity of personal memory—fragile, layered, and tactile. The materiality itself becomes a metaphor for the emotional states I investigate: the tension between permanence and impermanence, softness and weight, vulnerability and resilience.
Rather than illustrating a specific narrative, I aim to create paintings that breathe with the quiet intensity of lived experience. They are contemplative spaces where viewers might sense their own relationships mirrored back to them—moments of closeness, distance, longing, or recognition. In this way, my work exists between the personal and the universal, grounded in familial scenes yet reaching toward broader human questions.
Ultimately, my practice is less about defining identity and more about exploring the conditions of being—how we remember, how we change, how we remain connected even as we drift into our own worlds. Through these intimate reflections, I hope to make visible the fragile and profound threads that shape a life.
Education
Certificate in 2D Studio Art, Glendale Community College, Glendale, CA
Certificate in Graphic Design, Glendale Community College, Glendale, CA, 2023
Certificate in Taxation, Golden Gate University, San Francisco, CA, 2009
MS in Accountancy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, 2005
BA in French Language and Literature at Seoul National University, South Korea, 2003
Previous Career
Senior Tax Analyst, Latham & Watkins LLP, Los Angeles, CA, 2009-2019
Tax Analyst, Hilton Hotels Corporation, Beverly Hills, CA, 2007-2009
Junior Accountant, Samsung SDI, Inc., Seoul, South Korea, 2003-2004
Group Exhibition
The Spaces Between, The Art Gallery at GCC, Dec. 17, 2024 - Feb. 2, 2025