featured artists
through fresh eyes
Create each day with Jihye Seo as if it were your first.
Jihye Seo’s artistic pulse started to beat under the influence of great painters such as Odilon Redon, Pierre Bonnard, and Claude Monet, but it was David Hockney who truly set her heart on fire. Reading Hockney-Van Gogh: The Joy of Nature triggered a major turning point, awakening in her a new way of seeing the world. Suddenly, local landscapes unfurled themselves as living canvases, each tree, cloud, and ripple of light carrying a vivid sense of presence and meaning.
London’s streets and green spaces became Jihye’s open-air studio while she studied at the Royal College of Art (RCA). She wandered the capital with heightened sensitivity, focusing on the particularities of drawing while soaking in the colors, textures, and scents of her surroundings. One day in Battersea Park, Jihye noticed a baby gazing upward from a stroller, eyes transfixed on the sky. She asked herself, what in the world must this world look like to someone seeing it for the very first time? From that simple thought experiment grew a sincere desire to capture freshness and wonder, embedding in her work an untainted joie de vivre for all to see.
At the RCA, Jihye’s classmates and tutors touched her life, emboldening her to take risks, trust her creative convictions, and go wild with new materials. With her practice accommodating both tradition and innovation, Jihye shifted toward a more layered and abstract track that celebrated her deep psychological connection with the forces of Mother Earth. She also explored sugar painting, pouring caramelized pigments onto frames, and engaging her audience in a multisensory and distinctly experiential affair.
Having graduated, Jihye now approaches each piece with freedom and courage, coming to terms with imperfection and carrying forward the imagined perspective and unparalleled spirit of an artist forever seeing the world as if it were new.
