I am a South Korean immigrant caught in the historical crosscurrents of the clash of two very different cultures and two very different modernisms. While Korea still has shamans, peasants, and ritualistic festivals and dances, American modernism long ago relegated such realities to the primitive slot. My perspective and my life are infused with these realities and my works are the result of this encounter. My pictorial possibilities are not limited to the Western canon. There are times when I use the the written Korean language in my work for its elegant power. I like colors and images to radiate off the canvas and I often paint images of exuberance and motion, the power concentrated in body of a dancer being one of my favorite subjects. I also dwell on the theme of “not seeing” and being silenced. I do not paint many animals but I do paint monstrous beings that inhabit a nebulous space in the world of my imagination. I appreciate how realist and abstract art draw on the power artifice in different and brilliant ways for their purposes but I try not to let the boundaries between them control my artistic practice.