I still remember one of my first artworks with crayons from my 1st grade in South Korea: a diver in a deep ocean with lots of fish. It was great achievement to be remembered entire life. But I was a ‘writer’, rather than a ‘painter’, and I actively participated in a literature club the whole of my elementary school years.
Since elementary school in the 1980s in South Korea did not have a dedicated art teacher, it was middle school that I first learned about the 4B pencil and what art drawing is. My school art teacher had a plaster cast of Agrippa and taught a class once a week about drawing. She liked my drawing and encouraged me to go to art school – seriously.
When I went high school, I started to save my money to buy art materials, but soon I had to deal with my parents’ objections. I knew taking lessons for going to art school costs money that our home cannot afford, and being an artist was not such a good choice for making money. So, I gave up going to art school and chose another major for university – English literature.
While I was in university, I studied literature, and I liked it. But in extra time, I started to draw cartoons as a hobby. Since I was so religious and joined the Student Christian Movement Club, my cartoon had a Christian theme, and it was quite successful. Many churches used my cartoon in their weekly bulletins.
After graduation, I started to struggle to survive and had not much chance to draw cartoons. Soon, I learned computer programming (and I am still doing it as my primary full-time job) and spent days and nights to work for private company to make a money.
In 2006, 15 years after middle school, I started to think about fine art as a hobby..again, but I didn’t have skills except for what my art teacher taught me in middle school. But anyway, I bought my first oil paintings and painted some landscape and still life. Still, my life was a roller coaster. I needed money for my early stage of marriage, so I stopped to paint after several trials.
After 10 years after that, in 2016, I tried painting again with acrylic. And this time I got a good teachers, YouTube, with lots of good tips about painting. I painted some still life and portraits this time, and my skill started to improve little by little.
But soon I got obsessed with taking pictures with a DSLR camera instead. I got to know many models and photographers in the Dallas area and was successful, getting some international photographer awards and numerous magazine covers.
After COVID-19, studios are closed, and it got hard to take a session. I started to work from home as computer programmer, and in 2021, I came back to painting again thanks to oil paints I got as a Christmas gift from my kids. It was a Hobby Lobby brand with a tiny tube and lots of never-heard-before colors. It was tiny enough to need to buy new paints after a couple of squeezes.
Soon I bought new oil paints with an unknown brand from Amazon (I did not know what a good brand was at that time). And start to paint again. My skill was not much improved still, but this time, I watched lots of Youtube videos and started to practice. There was not much things I can do during pandemic years at home anyway.
In 2022, I painted lots of small portraits using oil color. Most of them are 8×10 in size. I also tried figurative paintings. In the spring of 2023, I met a group of artists from Panera in Sherman, Texas, by coincidence. I had a weekly routine to go to Panera on Sunday morning and enjoy sketching with brunch. One day I came to talk to one (Steve O’BlackSkiddy Street Puppet Company) from the artist group (and I didn’t know the group had been an artist group gathering there for 20 years), and soon I came to sit with them(and I still go to the meeting). We talk about artwork and share critiques about artworks and ideas. They are amazing artists, and it was a great benefit for me to bring my works to them and get some feedback.
In July 2023, from the group, Mark from Sparrow GallerySparrows Gallery, Denison Texas in Denison suggested to me to bring my artworks to the gallery, and soon I started to hang some of my works there, and my artist career has started.
After summer 2023, I tried to get to know more people around me and joined art guilds near my home in Prosper and Frisco, TX. Now I get to know many artists around me and enjoy sharing my work with them.
Yes, I am a self-taught artist, mainly learning from Youtube. I know that I started a bit late, but I am so happy to go back to my dream once I gave up.
