Artist's note

Lee Sun-Kyung has been working only self-portraits since 2004, not because herself is the most convenient model but because she has been interested in drawing human beings since childhood. People can be so beautiful yet also ugly and fathomless, that is exactly what has fascinated her to portrait them. Her early paintings represent scenes telling the story of difficult human relationships. At first, Lee focused on the relationships with others which can either be a salvation or a threat, then shifted to deal with the difficult relationships within the family and later focused on confrontation with herself. In the self-portraits entitled "Immaculate Virgin(2000)". the artist has represented already herself with admiration, doubt and cynicism. The mixture of narcissism, self-hatred, the fear of other times a strange lead would pop out from any random part of the body, or the whole canvas would be covered with uncountable faces. More recently she is depicting illusions hidden in the sub-consciousness by featuring them in a more surreal way. In the painting named "Gaze", the big eyes that once had a piercing glare are drawn as if they are leaving the face to venture out into the world. The powerful strokes on the big size paper convey the desire of the artist to have integrity as a person, with provocative and sometimes subversive humor. The self-portraits of Lee Sun-Kyung show a process of finding the several personas hidden in "me", having conflicts and then reconciling with each other. For her, like for many other female artists of the day, art is a mirror for self-reflection, which ushers her into self-healing.