Commissioned portrait painting.

Commissioned house painting.

Commissioned house painting.

A painting from the same photo set of my uncle, this time incorporating colors and playing with abstraction and realism.

 I used to have an indoor koi fish pond in my childhood home. I put my eyes onto the fish in this surreal drawing, putting myself into the scene. I guess in a sense, its like a mirror image; I’m a naive koi fish stuck in a small pond not knowing there are whole oceans.

An illustration set of old photographs of my late uncle, the pencil lead being made from carbon, found in all living things cycling through our universe, symbolically allowed me to put life back into my uncle’s memory.

my version of a trompe-l’oeil painting

my favorite image out of them all

I revisited an old idea of a drawing of bird-headed women and incorporated themes of my Korean heritage. In this piece, I am redefining the Korean folktale of the magpie and tiger, and the representation of women in Korean portraiture or the lack thereof. 

This is a painting from a photograph of three children. With the doubling of the figures I wanted to suggest movement or motion, like the kids weren’t able to sit still for the picture. The inverted image of the figures then becomes the ghost image of the children that was captured by the camera. “They” no longer exist, but when viewed through the phone, the memory of the “ghosts” is then revealed. 

In this painting, I created a structural illusion of silk drapery. I wanted to play with the dichotomy of something that looked luxurious and alluring out of something cheap like paper towels. The piece captures the eye with its folding dimensionality and changing colors illuminated by the sunlight from the effects of interference paint, an opalescent pigment that reflects the complementary color from different angles. It enhances the sensuality and dreaminess of the "luxurious fabric," but with another look you can see the truth of the material start to show through. 

finished a new personal painting

beginning stage