GENIE PARK

Background

Park holds a B.F.A. in Oriental Painting from the College of Fine Arts, Sookmyung Women’s University, and an M.Ed. (Master of Education) from The Graduate School, Sookmyung Women’s University. She is pursuing an MBA in Art & Luxury Business at the Graduate School of Business, Ewha Womans University. In 2025 she received a Special Selection (2 works) at the Gyeongbuk Grand Art Competition and was Selected (1 work) at the Korea Minhwa Museum Competition.

Silk, Pigment, Gold

Park describes herself as a contemporary Korean and Eastern artist and her work as a dialogue between tradition and present-day aesthetics. That dialogue begins with materials: her process, in her own phrase, is a meticulous dance with them. She paints on silk with animal glue, traditional mineral pigments and gofun, a white made from powdered shell, together with 24K gold leaf and imitation gold. Pigment and gofun are built up in layers, giving the colour its depth and its gradual shifts of tone, and contours are drawn with a fine-line technique. Park sets the result against oil painting: the softness and warmth of her surface are, for her, what distinguish it. Gold is placed across the image in dots and small pieces. In her account it extends the field of light and sensation and introduces a quiet vibration across the surface.

The Peacock as Mirror

Park cites the peacock as a traditional symbol of justice, wealth and honour, and then turns it to another use. In the paintings titled The Peacock’s Garden the bird is a mirror of her own identity and an extension of herself, a testament to her journey, resilience and inner strength. She writes that her essence was born in fire and rises into the form of the peacock, where it is refined into beauty and splendour. The splendour of the bird is thus tied to what comes before it: beneath the layered pigment and fine line, Park says, is the story of a person who has come through trial and brought honour and dignity into bloom. She calls the work a spiritual landscape that traces the course of a soul, and describes it as both her personal history and a hymn to everyone who passes through their own inner flames.

Park describes the garden around the bird as a paradise, a sanctuary where the passage of time seems to fade, and offers it as a place of peace and healing for people wearied by modern life. The train of the peacock dominates the composition; she likens its markings to the eyes of myth and folktale and speaks of layers of sapphire blue, emerald green and violet. What she hopes the viewer will sense, however, lies past the plumage: an inner light burning beyond the feathers.

Seeing Scent

Park’s flower paintings take the flow of scent as their subject, a theme named in the title By the Scent of Blossoms. Peonies in full bloom, often attended by butterflies or small birds, are set against grounds of a single colour and scattered with gold. For Park the blossom is a symbol in which time, emotion and presence are condensed. The means are material. Layered pigment and gofun give the colour depth, gold extends light across it, and in the interplay between them the boundary between the tangible and the intangible is meant to dissolve, bringing the viewer to an experience she calls seeing scent.

In both groups of work the stated subject lies behind the visible motif: an inner light beyond the feathers, a scent beyond the flower. Park states the wider aim of her practice as the reinterpretation, in a contemporary context, of the flow of perception, memory and unseen energy.

Art Fairs and Exhibitions

Park’s art fairs in 2026 include Zurich Art Fair, with Harang Gallery (Switzerland); BANK ART FAIR SEOUL at SETEC; PLAS Art Show Seoul at COEX; SEOUL ART SALON at The Shilla Seoul, with Risu Gallery; and Pink Art Fair at JW Marriott Hotel Seoul. Her exhibitions in 2026 include the solo exhibition Blooming in Eternityat Cha Gallery Permeated into Hanok at Risu Gallery; and the Venice Biennale Pavilion Parallel Exhibition, M Art (Italy).

Text courtesy Seoul Art Now.