ARTIST STATEMENT

I grew up surrounded by noise and instability, so my paintings aim to capture the brief, suspended moments when a subject is neither excited nor busy, neither reacting to me nor laughing. They exist somewhere in between. It's here beyond the noise that I find something raw and authentic. It's that fleeting moment when their true identity emerges, complete with its "horns and warts." I believe this is what makes us beautiful, a kind of "ugly beautifulness."

This ties to my fascination with human resilience. We build our identities and grow from both traumas and positive experiences. We can become hardened or tainted, or we can blossom—more often than not, it's a bit of both. But it's precisely this process that fuels our resilience; without it, we would wither. Resilience is fundamental to the human experience.

Being mixed-race, I had this journey of growing up with a sense of not belonging to Australia, the country I was raised in, but I soon discovered that I didn’t belong to America or Korea either, the countries that should be responsible for making me feel at home. This was never a negative thing, it simply was. I don’t think I even realised this was unique until I got older. As a painter it has enabled me to become a sort of disconnected onlooker who can slip in and out of understanding my subject or my viewers and at times to even disconnect myself in order to gain perspective.

Regarding my style, my influences have ranged quite broadly over the years across Fauvism, Expressionism, Surrealism, and even Baroque and beyond. I fell in love with Caravaggio as a teenager, with his ability to communicate such emotion and his beautiful use of light and dark. I have also always been very taken by the world that surrealists like Dali and Magritte can conjure up from a painting. Dumas is another artist who inspires me through her use of mood, and in my recent work I have played around with the loose and expressive qualities of some of Matisse’s work from his mid to late career. A recurring theme throughout my work is this desire to evoke emotion from the human expression.

BIO

Courtney Jinsook Bae (Australian, b.1986) is a mixed race Korean-American artist whose work is both provocative and invigorating. Her fearless exploration of perspective and her play with the human form leaves viewers energised and curious.

As a child Bae was inspired by her father's expressive Chinese brushstroke paintings, which is why Bae's artistic journey began in gouache watercolor. After formal training in Fashion Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, Bae's career took shape in the world of luxury fashion, where she gained experience as a visual merchandiser at renowned brands such as Prada, Miu Miu, and Burberry. This background had a significant impact on her creative style and continues to inspire her particularly when creating works on paper.

Over time Bae has become more commonly recognised for her large-scale oil paintings that seamlessly blend abstract figurative and expressionist elements. Bae exhibits her work globally.

A versatile artist, Bae thrives in the dynamic world of creative commercial marketing. She embraces the opportunity to push creative boundaries and explore diverse mediums.

Bae has won multiple juried awards and exhibited in New York, London, and Europe at various galleries including: Saatchi Gallery London, Denise Bibro Fine Art, New York; Bermondsey Project Space, London; Sweet Art, London; Dacia Gallery, New York; Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn; and Candid Arts Trust, London amongst others. The artist lives and works in London.