“A painting is not a picture of an experience, but is the experience.”

— Mark Rothko

This philosophy forms the foundation of my practice. Rather than recording or illustrating an experience, I create the conditions for one to occur. My paintings are not intended to be deciphered as narrative, but encountered as spaces of presence, stillness, and quiet resonance.

Moving fluidly between figuration and abstraction, the human form serves as a vital point of departure. Through the body, we register emotion, memory, and presence. While my earlier practice engaged with crisp silhouettes and graphic clarity, my work has expanded into a deeply tactile, impressionistic exploration of surface and scale. Working primarily within nuanced, monotone palettes and expansive fields, I distill the figure to its essential form before gradually softening its boundaries through layered brushwork, texture, and light.

As the distinction between subject and ground dissolves, the figure ceases to depict a specific person; instead, it becomes an open vessel for shared sensation. By withholding immediate literal clarity, I invite an intuitive way of seeing—one that allows the visual weight and temperature of the space to be felt before it is analyzed.

My process is both intuitive and deliberate. Building the canvas surface layer by layer, I respond to subtle shifts in pigment, depth, and edge as a way of navigating underlying unease. As structural tension gradually yields to warmth and balance, the painting becomes a reflection of that internal passage—a process of working through discord to arrive at consolation.

Jiyoung Jessica Park (b. 1996) is a painter from Seoul, South Korea, whose work transforms fleeting feelings and memories into lasting presence.

Her work traces the movement between loneliness and connection, weariness and warmth, and the moments when light begins to emerge again.

For Park, the desire to paint is a process of clarifying and clarifying again, stripping away what is unnecessary until something essential and indivisible remains.

Education

Cornell University, BFA, 2020

Solo Exhibitions

<A Quiet Confidence>, MATCH l A, Chicago, IL 2026

Group Exhibitions

<EMERGENT! Pop-UP Show>, Dragonfly Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2024
<Evanston Made Member Group Show>, Evanston Art Center, Evanston, IL, 2024
<The Vulnerable Escape>, Tjaden Experimental Gallery, Ithaca, NY, 2019
<An Exhibition of Student Work>, Palazzo Santacroce, Rome, 2019
<A8>, Olive Tjaden and Tjaden Experimental Galleries, Ithaca, NY, 2018
<ICU>, The Ink Shop Printmaking Center, Ithaca, NY, 2016
<Cornell University Student Prints>, Front Art Space, New York, NY, 2016
<Replay>, Tjaden Experimental Gallery, Ithaca, NY, 2016

Awards

Anderson Ranch Scholarship, Cornell University, 2019
David R. Bean Prize in Fine Arts, Cornell University, 2018