In my current work I tell the stories of North Korean families who left North Korea with no imagery or written words, only the stories passed through the generations, including my family the Kims.

Thank you for visiting my website.  I am Korean/ American artist from Tacoma, Washington; I studied art at Washington State University during the mid 1980's. I am inspired by light, form and the missing pieces of my family history. I like to paint  “beyond the f.o.v.” (field of vision).  It leaves some of the image or situation for the viewer to imagine.  This f.o.v. format mirrors my own situation of having missing photos and documentation, the actual diaspora of my own family.

My current works include images that tell the story of my mother Kim, Okchun and her escape from North Korea as a young girl and leaving behind her entire family. My mother fled North Korea during the Japanese colonization. She was twelve years old when she escaped with her ten-year-old brother and left behind her family. This series of paintings tell the life story of her my mother, Kim, Okchun and these are the stories that have been passed down. It is my hope to fill in the holes in the family history. 

The Korean story of diaspora has to be told and this is my attempt to tell the stories that my mother shared with me throughout my childhood.  In my effort to tell my mother's story, I have had the great honor of hearing other parallel stories. 

“To me the holes are as obvious as the missing photos of my mothers’ family, there is not one photograph of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins…the history of the Kim family has been stripped away; all I have are the words from my mother’s lips to my ears . This is my way of mourning the loss of my mother, grasping onto memories because the only connection to Korean culture I ever had is now gone. My mother made my Koreanness legitimate. With her gone, I'm just another another what are you? I know you're something, but I can't tell what, -another half-breed Army brat. "