Leeah Joo

Korean-born painter Leeah Joo is a visual artist who relishes storytelling. She refers to contemporary women writers like Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates and Anne Tyler when she discusses her work, and the embodiment of personal narratives has been the driving force in her work. In her highly detailed, realistic pieces, Joo utilizes windows - both traditional Korean-paper and American double-hung glass - as a portal between private and exterior spaces where quiet narratives unfold. The Korean-style windows are newer works inspired by her first pregnancy. In her paintings, interior space collides with the outside, creating a mirage of imagery infusing a private moment with the world beyond its walls. The window dressing, glass, or paper provide a pause to slow the consumption of a familiar or ordinary scene that might otherwise be overlooked, while safely obscuring the viewer from intruding on the moment observed. She sums up her paintings as 1/3 fi ction, 1/3 truth and 1/3 technique, and entitles her work to evoke the right suggestions.


BACKGROUND AND EDUCATION

2006-07   Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant
1996   MFA, Painting (Helen W. Winternitz Award), Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT
1994   BFA, Painting and Art History, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN

Comtemporary Asian Art Leeah Joo

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