Sung Eun Kim

Born in South Korea in 1985, Sung Eun Kim has been studying and creating art since he was very young.

After he graduated from Daejeon Art High School in South Korea, he came to the United States to pursue his study of painting, and finished his BFA at the California College of the Arts in 2010. After graduation, he worked as a freelance illustrator of children's books for two years. Because of his enthusiasm and passion for painting, he began his MFA program at the Academy of Art University in 2012 and has continued developing his artistic style.

Most of his paintings are based on photographs he took, chosen according to his own tastes. His paintings attempt to create a sense of atmosphere and light not necessarily present in the source photograph, but interpreted through his memories and life experience. As he studies the photo while painting, he makes decisions that translate the photo image into the painting: color choices, reconstruction of shapes, and points of rendering.

Regarding the degree of realism found in his work, it ranges between realistic depiction and unrecognizable abstraction. In order to express his search for the particular degree of depiction that represents his in-the-moment impression, he sometimes renders as much information from the photo as possible, approaching photo-realism. At other times, in rendering the elements of the photo, he does not necessarily follow the exact form of the figures, but paints with more flexibility.

He tries to capture a sense of flowing atmosphere in the figures represented in his paintings. The same applies to his expressions of color, bringing out and emphasizing the light as he sensed it when he took the photos. His selection of pigments is sometimes simple, matching the original photo, and other times divided and shifted into colors of his own expression.

In other words, his paintings are about how he interprets the images in a way that represents his own personal, artistic, and visual interests.