VCA2025

This second piece in The Jesus We Made Up series continues to explore the false narratives woven around faith and control. The figure, dressed like a tragic heroine, seems to come straight from a manipulated fairytale—submissive, bleeding, yet composed. Lyrics float above her, not as prayer but as accusation. The hallway behind suggests the promise of salvation, but the words on the wall expose its deceit: "No refunds." Religion here is not comfort—it’s a cruel performance. The composition evokes the aesthetic of stained glass and Renaissance grace, only to betray it with modern sarcasm and pain. Painted in acrylic and finished with oils, this work questions what we’ve sacrificed in the name of faith—and whether the church has become a storybook with no ending worth reading.

This painting challenges the hypocrisy within modern religious institutions that preach a Jesus they do not truly know. The central female figure, bearing a crown of thorns and glowing with quiet dignity, represents Christ—not as a man, but as misunderstood truth. Surrounding her are caricatured men—judging, mocking, moralizing—representing a church more obsessed with control than compassion. The scene criticizes the persecution of marginalized people, particularly the LGBTQ+ community, by those who claim divine authority. With symbolic shadows and a staircase toward distant light, the work contrasts divine silence with earthly noise. Painted with layers of acrylic and finished in oil for emotional depth, this piece asks: What have we done to the name of Jesus? And would we even recognize him if he came again?

The Jesus We Made Up is a visual trilogy that interrogates the foundations of modern religious belief. Across three works, Jesus is portrayed not as the traditional male figure we are told to believe in, but as a woman—an intentional disruption of doctrinal certainty. This choice reflects a central question: Do we truly know who or what we are worshipping, or have we merely inherited a constructed image shaped by power, patriarchy, and fear? Through a mix of classical references, surreal compositions, and satirical narratives, this series exposes the performative morality, commodification of faith, and institutional hypocrisy embedded in modern spirituality. Using different mediums—acrylic, oil, and watercolor—the works offer visual and emotional layers to dismantle the myth of clarity surrounding Christ. This is not a rejection of faith, but a demand for deeper truth. Not a loss of reverence, but a reclamation of it.

In this chapter of The Jesus We Made Up, the illusion of knowing Christ collapses. The figure—nude, feminine, and alone—sits with a nail and hammer in hand, preparing for a self-crucifixion. But who is this figure? Jesus? A woman? Both? The work confronts the central blind spot in modern belief: we worship an image we’ve never truly seen. The background contains a traditional crucifixion, distant and decorative—while the true act of sacrifice unfolds in silence. A line of pelicans, medieval symbols of self-sacrifice, bear witness like quiet clergy. The geometric divisions in the space suggest a fractured faith. Painted in acrylic and oil, this piece brings texture to the tension between tradition and truth. If we don't even know Christ’s gender, what do we really know about his teachings? Perhaps it is time we admit: We made him up.

In the chapter of The Jesus We Made Up, we return to the beginning—or at least, to a place we thought was the beginning. A child sits on the ground, uncertain and unwilling, as a woman with a halo tries to crown him with an identity not chosen, but imposed. Behind them, surreal animal-headed figures observe in silence, and in the distance, a crucified body casts a long, forgotten shadow. The giant toothy moon outside suggests madness, or perhaps the constant, biting smile of institutional religion. This is not a holy nativity—it’s a theatre where innocence is rehearsed and belief is manufactured. The scene reminds us: what we’ve accepted as divine may be only what we’ve been shown. And maybe, just maybe, we’ve misunderstood the place all along.

In this final chapter of The Jesus We Made Up, the battle is no longer symbolic—it becomes physical. Here, I depict myself—and all of us—locked in a spiritual wrestling match with the idea of Jesus presented by the Church. We do not fight out of hatred, but out of confusion, guilt, longing, resistance, and love. The ring is decorated with “Deus Vult,” echoing holy war and conquest. The figures embrace and struggle, their expressions complex: is it a fight, or a dance? In the background, a woman watches from a tilted cross. We are all witnesses. This is not about victory. It is about how belief becomes a battlefield inside the human heart. The Jesus we were told to follow may not be the one we are truly encountering. And maybe… we don’t want to win. Maybe we just want to be held.

This painting stands outside the previous series and turns its gaze to a national tragedy. Set in the aftermath of the Korean War, it captures the voiceless chaos that civilians—especially women and children—were forced to endure. The figures appear twisted and almost fossilized in anguish, caught in the branches of a dying tree. A mother in hanbok stands with a child on her back, not out of strength but of necessity—her foot resting on fallen bodies, a painful metaphor for survival born from violence. Birds hover low, not in flight, suggesting the death of hope. The texture, built with acrylic and sealed in oil, is layered like trauma: thick, brittle, and quiet. This is not a war painting. This is a painting about what war leaves behind. The forgotten, the unburied, the unspoken.

A flag usually waves in motion. But in this piece, Korea’s national flag floats in silence—held not by wind, but by memory. The white background was layered with repeated effort, scraped and rebuilt again and again. It is not pure white; it is a wounded white. Embedded in it are the quiet scars of history: war, division, loss, resilience. Though not part of a formal series, this work is conceptually linked to Forgotten Spring—reflecting the stillness that follows violence. The Taeguk symbol rests heavy and saturated, while the trigrams appear like ancient scripts, partially buried in ash. This is not a patriotic painting. It is a meditation on national identity, collective trauma, and the stories we imprint on symbols. In its silence, the flag asks us: What remains after the battle is over?

This painting captures the surreal duality of war and ordinary life. Inspired by the Korean War, the foreground is filled with vibrant chickens and chicks calmly pecking at the earth, unaware—or uncaring—of the tragedy unfolding behind them. In the distance, a group of people flee with oxen and carts, their faces expressive with urgency and exhaustion. The contrast is unsettling. Life goes on. The land continues to breathe. Chickens feed their young while humans abandon their homes. Painted in luminous watercolor with layered details and symbolic elements—giant fish, playful children, fruit-laden trees—this work questions what we choose to see in times of crisis. War does not always come with fire. Sometimes, it comes quietly—on the edge of the field, just behind the mountain. And sometimes, the chickens are the only ones who stay.

This painting appears playful at first glance—a game of hide-and-seek among blooming branches. But beneath its charm lies a reflection on modern Korean history: a time when silence was taught, fear was inherited, and hiding became survival. The bright red branches resemble wounds or veins, wrapping around half-hidden figures with frozen expressions. A young girl looks upward, confused not by the game—but by the reason for it. The dog entering the tree, marked with an “X,” disappears into the unknown. This is a story of a generation that learned to hide without knowing what they were hiding from. The forest is full of life, but no one is there. Just shadows, memory, and questions.

This painting is a portrait of dissonance. A child wears clothes too large, trying to fill a role too early. The figures behind—part-human, part-dog—wear suits, ties, and ambiguous expressions. They stand in doorways, as if watching, judging, or simply existing without concern. The child looks outward, not with fear, but with quiet resignation—or perhaps defiance. The background is textured and decorative, but the emotional atmosphere is thick. This work reflects the moment when innocence confronts expectation. When a child is asked to act grown-up before understanding what adulthood even means. The clothes don’t fit. The gaze doesn’t lie. And the question remains: Who decided this was the right size for me?

This painting is a surreal stage—a royal figure embraces a clown under a cosmic sky, while a bird watches from a tiny wooden table. A bitter carrot in royal attire peers suspiciously at the scene. Are we witnessing a romance? A betrayal? Or a play within a play? The piece explores the absurd theater of identity. The clown hides sorrow behind a painted smile. The crowned figure holds and is held—torn between power and vulnerability. The watching bird symbolizes the viewer’s silent role in every drama, while the carrot’s expression speaks of rivalry, memory, or comic judgment. Rendered in oil with bold textures and rhythmic brushwork, this work references both European expressionism and Korean storytelling forms. Nothing here is literal. But everything is real. Because deep down, we’re all characters in someone else’s story.

This painting is a satire of modern escape fantasies. A man in a top hat casually waves goodbye to his wife—who is literally being consumed by a swirling vortex—while announcing, “I'm going to the club every night.” It is funny. Until it isn’t. The absurdity of the text and childlike typography contrast with the violent chaos of the scene. Is he mourning? Celebrating? Escaping? Or simply narrating the collapse of domestic life with comedic detachment? This work mocks the polished language of “self-care” and “freedom” by showing its grotesque underbelly. Acrylic textures whirl like moral confusion, and the absurd becomes a mirror. It’s not just about him. It’s about all of us, —who cheerfully say “goodbye” while someone else disappears.

This is my self-portrait, but not the kind that tries to flatter or resolve. It is a moment of confrontation—with the version of myself I pretend to be, and the one I fear I am becoming. The figure looks sideways, not to pose, but to inspect. A pale, smiling form stands behind—painted in flat, artificial brightness. It may be a mask, a memory, or a version of me the world prefers. The colors on my face are raw, smudged, unbalanced. I didn’t try to fix them. Because I’m not fixed. In this piece, I ask not who am I?, but who is watching me be me?

This painting captures a memory of my younger brother and me laughing together inside my father’s old clock repair shop, where the ticking sounds surrounded us like a rhythm of safety, and one particular clock always seemed to read 10:58—as if time itself had paused to let us be completely joyful just a little longer; our faces are exaggerated because that happiness was big and real, and though the colors are rough and blurred with texture, it reflects how memories live inside us—not perfectly—but fully felt; this is a portrait not just of two children, but of the space our father made for us to exist without fear, without questions, and without knowing how rare such a moment would become.

This painting is part of a fantasy picture book series set in space, where characters drift between planets, messages, and myths, collecting scattered words from broken satellites of human thought—fragments of advertising, art history, romantic clichés, and questions about identity swirl through a surface of watercolor textures and layered design, creating a galaxy where language becomes both magical and absurd; the figures are whimsical yet intentional, navigating a universe that looks playful but reflects how we are shaped by the invisible gravity of words, systems, and desires; created with watercolor and surface design techniques, this piece invites viewers to read rather than just look, to float through color and symbol as if paging through a dream written by the cosmos itself, and it reflects my hope to work in children’s illustration—telling stories that are bright, strange, and layered with meaning, even when they’re set among stars.

This piece is the second chapter in my space-themed picture book series, where imagination literally erupts from the mind like orbiting streams of color, emotion, and story; the figure at the right is dreaming—or perhaps building—a world out of swirling galaxies, forgotten words, and emotional fragments, while a grinning planet beams messages back through bursts of pink speech and poetic space dust; created with watercolor and surface design layering, this work explores how thoughts—especially from childhood—expand into emotional constellations that become stories, creatures, and new mythologies; here, words are no longer tools for explanation but elements of world-building, pulled from cosmic archives of memory and play; as someone who hopes to illustrate children’s books, I wanted this work to feel like opening a magical mind and watching it blossom into a whole new planet, where storytelling is the most powerful force of gravity.

This final piece in my fantasy picture book series explores what happens when the universe becomes saturated with messaging, branding, and visual noise—where even a floating eye, once a symbol of curiosity and innocence, now drifts through an orbit of advertising, information fragments, wilted flowers, and oversized insects; the piece combines watercolor, surface design, collage, and real plant textures to build a world that feels both dreamy and corrupted, beautiful and overstimulated; here, the Coca-Cola logo isn't a product but a planet, the words aren't narration but static, and the creatures seem to be evolving within a universe shaped not just by gravity, but by consumption and surveillance; this is a whimsical critique wrapped in childlike color, showing how fantasy can reflect reality even when it's set among stars, and as an aspiring children’s illustrator, I hope this work invites both laughter and thought in equal measure—because even magic must learn to see with open eyes.

This painting begins my First Love series—a visual narrative about the awkward, magical, and unpredictable moment when love enters a young heart for the first time; here, two figures stand in a neon-tinted world layered with textures, scribbled words, and emotional chaos, as if their feelings are blooming faster than they can understand them; the crown and cloud covering their heads hint at fantasy, confusion, and self-mythology, while the phrase “Are you ready?” tears across the page like a challenge from the universe; created using watercolor, surface design, and collage, this piece captures that threshold moment between innocence and awareness, when love becomes more than just a word—when it becomes color, symbol, and the start of a story; the cat in the corner silently watches, like memory itself, always present in the background of first love, but never fully explained.

In the second piece of my First Love series, the mood shifts from anticipation to tension—this work explores how love sometimes blooms in silence, distance, and repression; the two figures are physically close, even sharing a pair of earbuds, yet emotionally suspended, separated by unseen forces; the words “Our love is six feet under—I can’t” are scratched into the surface like a buried confession, echoing a love that feels both alive and impossible; fragments of urban culture—Starbucks logos, consumer words, and vertical color bars—suggest a modern backdrop where love is shaped, filtered, and constrained by social noise; painted in layered watercolor and surface textures, this piece captures a generation’s quiet ache, the way first love sometimes hurts more because we don’t know how to fight for it yet; it’s about the weight of unsaid things, and the longing to breathe when everything tells you not to feel.

This third piece in the First Love series captures the sudden, sweet explosion of emotion—the moment when love breaks the silence and becomes something real, bright, and messy; two figures lean into a kiss behind a shared slice of watermelon, both hiding and revealing their feelings at once, while a blazing sun made from a Starbucks logo hovers above, symbolizing modern rituals and corporate imprints on even our most innocent memories; the background is bursting with layered textures, playful graffiti, and scrawled words like “rush” and “you look like my dream,” echoing the chaotic energy of first connection; painted with mixed media, this work is about the overwhelming force of that first intimate moment—how it’s not always about physicality, but about letting your heart finally speak without asking permission; it’s awkward, colorful, impulsive, and unforgettable—just like first love at its sweetest.

This final piece in the First Love series captures the quiet, poetic end of a love that was never meant to last—but will never be forgotten; two figures share a final bubble-gum kiss, suspended in a memory that feels both bright and fading, surrounded by falling leaves, fading symbols, and distant dreams; the word “Christmas” hints at a season of closeness that’s just out of reach, while real pressed leaves serve as fragile markers of time passing; in the top corner, a girl in traditional dress watches silently—perhaps the girl herself, or just the idea of her, now unreachable; this piece is about how first love doesn’t really end—it becomes part of who we are, a gentle ache we carry through life; made with watercolor, collage, and natural materials, it’s a story not about heartbreak, but about beauty staying long enough to become memory.

This painting explores the tension between who we are and how we are seen—between the face we present and the one we hide, even from ourselves; the subject gazes sideways while holding a transparent glass, through which a distorted reflection of another face appears—more delicate, perhaps more honest; the viewer is caught between these two identities, unsure which one is more “real”; the fashion-like patterns and minimal color background evoke a curated version of self, one shaped by culture, gender expectations, and social branding; inspired by modernist portraiture and surrealist optical play, this work asks whether we are ever truly seen, or whether our identity is always filtered—by glass, by society, or by fear; through bold lines and soft textures, the piece becomes a quiet confrontation with the act of perception itself; it is not about answers, but about the unsettling beauty of not knowing who’s looking back.

This still life painting of a blue balloon dog may appear playful and familiar, but it quietly holds a subtle tension between joy and emptiness, between surface shine and inner quiet; inspired by shiny objects and their ability to reflect both light and feeling, I approached this work not just as an object study, but as a meditation on artificial happiness—how we present cheerful shapes while sometimes feeling deflated inside; the smooth reflections, exaggerated shadows, and delicate curves invite the viewer to pause, look closely, and consider what lies beneath the gloss; rendered in acrylic with careful attention to value and form, the piece transforms a childhood icon into a symbol of emotional stillness—both charming and melancholic, suspended in time; it is a balloon that will never pop, and a smile that will never move, reminding us that even the happiest things can carry silence inside.

This abstract piece, created entirely with oil pastel, is a spontaneous yet deliberate meditation on the fragmented human form and the emotions buried within it; shapes emerge and dissolve—eyes, mouths, fingers—suggesting a figure that is felt more than seen; the chaotic layering of color and form echoes the energy of a body in motion, a memory, or even a dream; bright floral motifs interrupt the distortion like thoughts or memories resurfacing, and the dense texture of the pastel reinforces the urgency and rawness of the gesture; rather than depicting a person, the piece becomes a map of feeling—an emotional topography made visible through lines, curves, and vibrations of color; this work is not about precision, but about presence, about letting the unconscious take over and trusting the hand to say what words can’t; it is a figure seen from the inside out.

This mixed-media piece juxtaposes the fragile freedom of birds with the manufactured permanence of modern waste—using a real Coca-Cola label as a symbolic interruption to nature’s flight; a bird, mid-air, collides with the iconic red stripe, its wings frozen in resistance against a system that wraps even the sky in plastic and branding; below, a road sign with a bird silhouette adds an eerie echo—reminding us of the illusion of protection in a world that commodifies even symbols of freedom; the rabbit watches silently, almost childlike, as though wondering if it too will be recycled; created with gouache, found materials, and gestural mark-making, this work confronts the viewer with a playful but unsettling question: in a world filled with products that promise refreshment, what happens when even the air becomes a billboard? It’s a call to look again, not at the bird, but at what’s in its way.

This drawing explores a quiet moment between two anthropomorphic figures—a rabbit and a dog—posed like a formal portrait, yet surrounded by emotional ambiguity; the rabbit reads, eyes closed, in a flowery Victorian dress, while the dog stands stiffly beside her, wearing a coat but looking elsewhere with drooping eyes; their exaggerated animal features and symbolic attire create a tension between innocence and unease, as if this scene is both whimsical and deeply sad; the sparse use of color—scribbled floral patterns, the weight of red and yellow—adds a raw immediacy, suggesting that the moment was captured rather than composed; inspired by character studies and narrative illustration, the work functions like a page from an unwritten story, where the silence between characters speaks louder than any dialogue; this piece is less about formality and more about the unsaid emotions that hover between figures, generations, or memories.

Built from cardboard and painted with vivid acrylics, this sculpture is a playful yet vulnerable self-portrait in robot form—each face, gesture, and fragment expressing a different layer of my emotional spectrum: anger, curiosity, joy, fear, pride, and contradiction, all colliding inside a blocky body that reflects both strength and fragility; what appears cartoonish on the outside conceals an inner universe of feeling, and the robot's hybrid expressions—part hero, part misfit—act as armor and confession at once; this piece asks, “What does it mean to construct yourself?” and offers an answer made not of polished materials but of raw truth, rough edges, and handmade honesty.

This four-sided sculptural robot is a self-portrait built from discarded cardboard boxes, acrylic paint, and chaotic emotion. Each face reveals a different emotional state—rage, joy, vulnerability, confusion—as if every side is a different version of me shouting for attention. The robot is designed like a toy, but it's not something to play with; it is made of contradictions: angry text, flirtatious imagery, and childlike color, trapped inside a box-body that's always performing, always defending. By rotating around the piece, the viewer experiences the shifting masks I wear, not to deceive, but to survive. The box becomes both armor and stage, sculpture and scream.

This monoprint captures the unsteady gravity of adolescence, where the world feels upside down and the self is undefined. The floating red cone—a skirt, a warning sign, a teenage shout—hangs mid-air, disconnected from a torso, while the chaotic white lines tangle like thoughts, hormones, or rules I didn’t understand. I used monoprinting to embrace unpredictability—each pull of the print is unique, like each version of me during those confusing years. The figure is incomplete, awkward, slightly absurd, but defiant in its bold red heels. This work speaks to a time when identity was performance, instability was normal, and everything felt both too heavy and not real at all.

This monoprint reflects the confusion and contradictions of adolescence, where I dressed myself not in style, but in questions. The rounded blue shape—resembling both a school uniform and a cocoon—is covered with yellow hearts: symbols of the love I thought I needed, or the attention I silently craved. The red head, centered and raw, hints at self-consciousness and pressure, while the thick arms raised in protest or yearning are cut off by the edges of the print—just like I often felt cut off from fully expressing myself. Monoprinting gave me the freedom to accept imperfection, letting textures and colors surprise me, the same way my teenage years surprised me with new emotions I wasn’t ready for. This piece is not a portrait of who I was, but how I felt—layered, awkward, bright, and messy.

This monoprint captures the raw intensity of adolescence—the moment I realized I had a body and that others were watching it. The bold red swimsuit sits like armor, both empowering and exposing, while the black figure—headless yet expressive—represents how my identity was still forming. The grid suggests confinement, like the boxes society and school tried to fit me into. Stars and fragmented reds burst around me, evoking the chaos of hormonal confusion, body image, and desire. The yellow patch in the chest is not a wound, but a spotlight—burning through me with the pressure to look right, act right, be right. This print was made using monoprinting techniques with layered textures and colors, allowing imperfection and intuition to guide the process. It’s a visual memory of a teenage self trying to understand visibility—wanting it and fearing it at once.

This print is a self-portrait of my childhood, created using intaglio plate printing techniques. In this work, I sought to preserve the magical way I once saw the world—when butterflies were messengers, flowers were friends, and every star in the sky seemed to know my name. My smiling face, surrounded by blooming petals and floating insects, reflects a time untouched by fear or self-doubt. The bird in flight and the scatter of stars evoke both innocence and dreams yet to be spoken. The lines are delicate and precise, but what they carry is deeply emotional—an invitation to remember the beauty of unfiltered joy. As I etched this image onto the plate, it felt like carving open a memory I never wanted to forget.

This etching captures a precious memory from my childhood—riding a bicycle with my younger brother in the back and our mother standing beside us. The scene unfolds in front of our traditional home, where the flowers bloom and birds fly freely, just like the love that held our family together. Through the fine lines and textures of the etching process, I tried to evoke not only the physical likeness of that moment but the emotional warmth and simplicity of a time now far away. My mother’s quiet presence, my brother’s trust, and my own sense of excitement—all coexist in this intimate frame. The nostalgic tone is intensified by the timeless quality of printmaking, as if this memory, once fading, has found a way to remain.

This linocut print captures a giraffe in its most elegant and instinctive motion—bending its long neck to drink. The bold contrast of black and white lines simplifies the form into rhythmic verticals and curves, evoking the tall trees of its habitat and the quiet strength of the animal. The giraffe becomes both subject and pattern, blending into the surrounding forest and asserting its presence at the same time. Through this visual minimalism, I wanted to explore the harmony between animal and environment, body and background. The process of carving linoleum emphasized my intention to reduce detail and focus on movement, shape, and symbolic balance. Like many of my works, this piece reflects my ongoing interest in visual storytelling using strong graphic language.

This project is a comprehensive corporate rebrand of Giant Tiger, a beloved Canadian discount retail chain. From logo and mascot redesign to a complete brand standards guide and a themed annual report, I reimagined the company’s visual identity to better reflect its friendly, accessible, and community-focused values. The new mascot design enhances emotional connection, while the revised logotype balances approachability with bold confidence. A consistent system was developed across all touchpoints—from business cards and uniforms to storefront signage and publication design. The project blends playful character-driven storytelling with clean corporate structure, illustrating my dual strength as both illustrator and strategic designer. This rebrand challenges the boundary between design for business and design for delight—creating a corporate identity that is both memorable and meaningful.

This digital extension of the Giant Tiger corporate rebrand explores the application of refreshed brand identity across responsive website and mobile app interfaces. The playful yet trustworthy tone established through illustration and color carries seamlessly into digital UX. The website emphasizes community engagement and brand storytelling, while the app delivers a streamlined, user-friendly retail experience. With careful attention to hierarchy, accessibility, and device adaptability, the design supports both commercial functionality and emotional connection. Through this project, I demonstrate how branding can go beyond visuals—becoming a living, interactive system that serves users while reinforcing core brand values.

This poster promotes my illustrated book about the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage, blending personal narrative with vibrant vector illustrations. It captures both the physical journey and the emotional transformation that comes with walking the Camino. The folded-paper concept visually represents the unfolding of stories—layered with textures of discovery, solitude, and spiritual renewal. Through bold typography and rich color contrasts, the design invites viewers to imagine their own inner journey. More than just a travel memoir, this work celebrates the quiet moments, unexpected friendships, and the symbolic weight of each step on a 500-mile path.

This travel sketchbook combines illustration and design to tell a deeply personal story of departure, discovery, and memory. Using ink linework and watercolor, the images capture fleeting scenes from airports to Lisbon streets. Each layout is carefully constructed with a layered grid, allowing space for storytelling while guiding the reader’s eye through the journey. The use of color swatches, handwritten accents, and subtle typographic hierarchy reflects the spontaneous nature of travel. Rather than simply recording moments, the book is designed as a reflective object—one that asks how we remember places and people, how we say goodbye, and how we carry those emotions with us. This work bridges narrative illustration and editorial design, inviting viewers not only to read but to feel.

This ink drawing captures a sacred moment along the Camino de Santiago—the Cruz de Ferro, where pilgrims place stones as symbols of grief, gratitude, and release. Rather than presenting a literal landscape, I rendered this scene as a spiritual topography where each line is a prayer, each shadow a trace of memory. The cross, standing like a silent witness, rises vertically against a horizontal world—symbolizing the internal shift that occurs within the walker. Figures are isolated, minimally detailed, their faces left blank to reflect the universality of the journey. By working only in ink, I allowed line and texture to speak louder than color. I wanted viewers to feel the weight of the stones, not through realism, but through repetition, rhythm, and silence. The turbines in the background hum with a distant future, while the foreground remains firmly rooted in ancient ritual.

This urban sketch captures a fleeting yet cinematic moment in the heart of Paris, at Fontaine Saint-Michel. Composed entirely in ink, the drawing is a study in rhythm and architectural texture, balancing classical structure with the transient motion of modern pedestrians. Every figure appears mid-step or mid-thought—echoing the pulse of a city that never pauses. Jooho Jang approaches this drawing not only as a documentation of place, but as a choreography of visual time. The stone fountain, weathered and monumental, anchors the scene—while tangled trees and crowded signage create a layered grid of historical and contemporary life. The absence of color invites the viewer to notice light, shadow, and gesture. Part of a broader travel sketchbook project, this work is both observational and editorial: a moment of stillness framed within the chaos, asking how we carry memories of places long after we leave them behind.

This urban sketch captures the statue of Winston Churchill standing in downtown Toronto—broad-backed, towering, yet curiously swallowed by the architectural weight behind him. Using a limited ink wash palette, I aimed to blur the edges between permanence and impermanence. The figure casts no clear shadow, suggesting that power—like memory—is filtered through personal perspective. Rather than glorify the monument, I chose to illustrate it as part of the living city: surrounded by trees, intersected by pedestrians, half-hidden in passing glances. Rendered through loose lines and soft washes, the composition mirrors how history lingers in our consciousness—not as a fact, but as atmosphere. This drawing is part of my ongoing exploration of public memory and visual storytelling, asking: What do we choose to monumentalize, and what gets left in the margins?

Drawn from a live model but reshaped by memory, this work collapses the boundaries between direct observation and imagined emotion. The figure rests in a loosely defined space, where shadows become furniture, and colour blocks turn into ambient thoughts. I used black ink and layered washes of gouache to create tension between solidity and dissolution—between presence and suggestion. Her posture is relaxed, but the world around her leans with quiet unease, like a city pressing in. The marks are spontaneous and uneven, intentionally resisting refinement, as if to protect the rawness of the moment. This piece is not about anatomy; it is about solitude. It asks: When someone sits in stillness, how much of that silence is filled by their own story, and how much by ours? In that ambiguity, I find connection.

This figure study is not about stillness—it's about anticipation. The model, rendered in ink and wash, appears frozen in time, but every curve and gesture vibrates with a quiet sense of drama. A lone spotlight tilts above her like a theatrical eye, not just illuminating the body but staging a silent performance. Using ink lines and irregular washes, I leaned into expressive distortion. The limbs are thick, the torso monumental, the hand almost too delicate—because I wasn’t recording anatomy. I was drawing presence. What fascinates me is not perfection but personality. The dotted fabric loosely covering her shoulder is not clothing but a clue: a hint of vulnerability, modesty, and even play. Through this tension of conceal and reveal, the image speaks about all of us—how we perform for the world, and how we rest between performances.

This piece is part of a pattern design series that explores rhythm, repetition, and the emotional resonance of surface. Using a bold palette of warm yellows, vibrant oranges, and deep teal, this work layers hand-carved motifs through monoprint techniques to evoke both ancient textile traditions and contemporary visual play. Each flower-like symbol and teardrop shape carries a dual meaning—ornamental yet organic, decorative yet deeply symbolic. Rather than functioning solely as a visual background, the pattern becomes the subject itself, vibrating with a tactile intensity. This work invites viewers to look slowly, to notice imperfections, overlaps, and the pulse of the artist’s hand beneath the repetition. It challenges the viewer to ask: what if decoration was more than embellishment—what if it was language?

This work is a part of my surface design series where structure meets spontaneity. “Electric Reverie” pulses with layered stencils and offset impressions in blue, red, and citron yellow, evoking the visual noise of a dream in motion. It draws inspiration from mosaic traditions, retro pop palettes, and textile culture, while intentionally disrupting symmetry to invite rhythm through chaos. Hand-printed with multiple transparent overlays, the misregistrations become metaphors for emotional fragmentation—how memory never repeats exactly but always echoes. There’s tension here between ornament and abstraction, between the decorative and the disruptive. The pattern almost moves—vibrating like static between clarity and distortion. Rather than serve a functional purpose, this design asserts itself as visual energy, uncontainable and alive.

“Textured Geometrics” is a bold investigation into repetition, rhythm, and materiality. Created through layered stencil printing and tactile surface treatment, this piece invites not just the eye but also the sense of touch. The vibrant grid pulses with kinetic energy—red, yellow, and blue circles bumping against a wavering black flow that slices through the order. Each circular motif features a raised, cracked texture, emphasizing the handmade process behind the mechanical structure. The work evokes mid-century textile design, 8-bit graphics, and Bauhaus color theory while defying flatness. It is about contrast: between hard and soft, digital logic and painterly imperfection. This piece proposes pattern as a form of emotion—a coded language of feeling, movement, and rebellion.

This piece is the final crescendo of a four-part pattern design series exploring rhythm, movement, and chromatic dialogue. Built through layers of vibrant block-printed motifs, Woven Echoes evokes the sensation of textiles in motion—reminiscent of traditional weaving, digital glitches, and urban tilework all at once. Each segment bends and flows, creating tension between order and improvisation. The bold, saturated color palette shifts diagonally across the plane, inviting the viewer to track the passage of energy as it morphs from warm to cool. What begins as repetition becomes a meditation on difference. This work captures a moment where design transcends decoration—it becomes storytelling through structure, a choreography of forms.

Veins of Bloom concludes a five-part exploration of pattern as a living, breathing organism. In this piece, layered marbling and block textures erupt into an organic matrix—suggestive of flower petals, blood vessels, or neural networks. What appears at first as a decorative surface soon reveals a deeper tension: the push and pull between chaos and cohesion, spontaneity and structure. The fluorescent yellow-green palette pulses with energy, while the web-like cyan channels create a rhythm of flow and connectivity. This final work abandons rigid geometry and embraces biomorphic abstraction, allowing nature's intuitive patterning to guide the form. Veins of Bloom doesn’t just decorate—it breathes, grows, and asks to be felt.

Bunny Bloom is a whimsical pattern that invites viewers into a world of playful innocence and surreal repetition. Inspired by childhood imagination and folk motifs, the design features brightly colored rabbits emerging from black holes, surrounded by stylized flowers and alien-like flora. The hand-drawn lines and analogue painting method maintain a tactile charm, emphasizing imperfection as beauty. Each bunny carries a sense of alertness—half hiding, half peeking—like fragments of memory or moments of joy we try to hold onto. The use of a saturated yellow background sets a cheerful rhythm, while the recurring elements create a hypnotic, storybook-like flow. This piece goes beyond mere decoration; it’s a narrative loop, a loop of play, protection, and poetic absurdity.

This collage responds to the 2021 decision by the Japanese government to release treated radioactive water from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean. Through a surreal and layered visual language, the work critiques how ecological harm is disguised as progress. Borrowing from Hokusai’s Great Wave, the composition places mutated marine creatures, a corporate figure in shame, and absurdly dressed predators into a flood of symbols—radioactive fish, flowers of decay, and waves of unresolved trauma. The title FOR WHOM? questions who bears the cost of such decisions. Using contrast in type and composition, the design draws the viewer’s eye to moments of discomfort. Dried botanical elements are placed in tension with digital fragments, symbolizing a fragile balance between nature and exploitation. This piece does not seek to provide answers, but rather demands accountability—and remembrance.

This watercolor piece is not a landscape—it is a self-portrait in disguise. The winding road, the lone silhouette of the goat, and the silent trees echo a journey through uncertainty, where memory and identity blend like overlapping washes of pigment. Circular forms—like snow, or perhaps forgotten thoughts—float through the air, obscuring and revealing at once. The billboard on the left introduces a jester-like mask: is it a persona or a protector? Is it Jooho, or someone watching him? The work invites viewers into a dream-space between reality and introspection, where the act of walking becomes a metaphor for becoming. The palette is warm yet subdued, suggesting that even in ambiguity, there is gentleness. This piece does not claim to know the answers. Instead, it asks: Can the road remember you, even when you’ve forgotten where you’re going?

This pop-style poster is a playful yet poignant self-portrait marking the end of my time at Sheridan College. With bright, exaggerated typography and a superhero pose, the work parodies the aesthetics of movie advertising while celebrating my transformation during these years. The caption “Maybe he was COOL from birth” is not a boast—it’s a wink, a smile at the younger version of myself who once feared stepping into a new world. Through parody, humor, and nostalgia, I reflect on the courage it took to study abroad, to draw again, and to dream bigger. This piece is a love letter to my time at Sheridan—a collage of joy, awkwardness, and self-discovery.