From the depths,
a flower of longing blooms
Inner landscapes, drawn quietly into color.The self that surfaces from the abyss and the wetland — dream and paradise.
The inner landscape —
where longing settles and rises again
Lee Yuji is a painter who renders deep inner landscapes and the emotion of longing. She graduated from the Department of Western Painting at Suwon University and completed her master's degree at the Graduate School of Kookmin University. Across her work, the canvas becomes a place where the interior is made visible — not as illustration, but as a weather of feeling.
Her recurring image is a flower that blooms from the depths. In works such as The Self that Bloomed in the Wetland, Flower of the Abyss, the self surfaces from dark water and marshland, finding form as a bloom. The abyss is not a place of despair in her painting but a ground — the soil from which longing germinates and rises.
Across solo exhibitions — from Landscape of the Abyss (2017) through Paradise of the Dreamer (2024) and Party of Longing (2024) to Where Longing Settles and Rises Again (2025) — she has built a vocabulary of dream and paradise. The fantasy in her canvases is not escape but a way of dwelling: a contemplative, lyrical register in which the interior life is given room to breathe.
Major themes
- 1
Flowers from the abyss
The self surfaces from dark water and wetland to bloom — the abyss as ground rather than despair.
- 2
Longing and paradise
Dream and paradise appear not as escape but as a way of dwelling — a place where longing settles and rises again.
- 3
A contemplative, lyrical tone
The interior life is given room to breathe — painting as a quiet weather of feeling rather than narration.
The artist's timeline
- 2017Solo exhibition 〈Landscape of the Abyss〉, SAI Art Document, Seoul.
- 2020Excellence Prize, Art Prize Gangnam; 〈Forest of the Abyss 2〉 enters the Seoul Cultural Bureau museum collection.
- 2024Solo exhibitions 〈Party of Longing〉 (The Squares Gallery, Seoul) and 〈Paradise of the Dreamer〉 (Eunpyeong Culture Foundation); Excellence Prize, Gyeomjae Jeong Seon Museum “Artist of Tomorrow.”
- 2025Solo exhibitions 〈Where Longing Settles and Rises Again〉 (Art Boda Gallery, Seoul) and 〈Karmadaiseu〉 (Museolljeon, Jeondeungsa / Seoun Gallery, Ganghwa).
- 2026Resident, Chuncheon Art Village 4th cohort (Chuncheon Culture Foundation).
Selected exhibitions, awards & collections
- Solo exhibitions: 〈Landscape of the Abyss〉 (2017), 〈Party of Longing〉 (2024), 〈Paradise of the Dreamer〉 (2024), 〈Where Longing Settles and Rises Again〉 (2025), 〈Karmadaiseu〉 (2025)
- Awards: Excellence Prize, Gyeomjae Jeong Seon Museum “Artist of Tomorrow” (2024); Encouragement Prize, JDC Jeju Art Exhibition (2024); Excellence Prize, Art Prize Gangnam (2020); Special Selection, Hanseong Baekje Art Grand Prize Exhibition (2015)
- Collections: 〈The Self that Bloomed in the Wetland, Flower of the Abyss〉, Gyeomjae Jeong Seon Museum (2024); 〈Forest of the Abyss 2〉, Seoul Cultural Bureau museum (2020); 〈The Red Room〉, Hana Bank Art Bank (2016)
- Residency & two-person shows: Chuncheon Art Village 4th cohort (2026); two-person exhibitions including 〈Exploring Life〉 and 〈1st Track: Healing〉 with Yungyeom
Three essays —
on the depths and what rises from them
1The abyss as ground — not despair but soil
The word that recurs across Lee Yuji's titles is the abyss — the depths. It would be easy to read it as a sign of despair. In her painting it is the opposite: a ground. The dark water and the wetland are where things take root. From 〈Landscape of the Abyss〉 (2017) onward, the depth is not a fall but a soil — the place a bloom comes from.
This is why her surfaces, for all their introspection, are not heavy. The interior is rendered as a weather rather than a wound: a contemplative, lyrical register in which feeling is allowed to settle, gather, and surface again. The depth holds; the flower rises.
2The self that bloomed in the wetland
The image at the center of her practice is a flower of the self that blooms from marshland — the title of the work held in the Gyeomjae Jeong Seon Museum collection. The wetland is liminal: neither solid land nor open water, a threshold where form is still negotiable. To paint the self there is to paint it in the act of becoming.
Across the solo exhibitions — 〈Paradise of the Dreamer〉, 〈Party of Longing〉, 〈Where Longing Settles and Rises Again〉 — the same logic returns in different keys. Dream and paradise are not destinations elsewhere but conditions of the interior, fantasies that let the self find a shape it can live in. Recognition has followed: the “Artist of Tomorrow” Excellence Prize and collections at the Gyeomjae Jeong Seon Museum and the Hana Bank Art Bank.
3An emerging painter, building a vocabulary
Lee Yuji belongs to a younger generation of painters still building their vocabulary. The arc from her graduate years at Kookmin University to the 2026 residency at Chuncheon Art Village shows a practice consolidating its language: the abyss, the wetland, the bloom, the longing that settles and rises. Two-person exhibitions — 〈Exploring Life〉 and 〈1st Track: Healing〉 among them — extend that conversation outward.
For an emerging artist, each exhibition is also a question of footing: of whether the work can continue. That is where this campaign meets her. Lee Yuji joins it not as a subject of its cause but as a fellow artist in solidarity — lending her quiet, lyrical canvases so that another artist might find the ground to keep working.
From 〈Landscape of the Abyss〉 to the wetland blooms of recent years, Lee Yuji's painting has pursued a single quiet question: what rises from the depths, and how does longing find a form it can live in? She joins this campaign not as a subject of its cause but as a fellow artist in solidarity — so that those navigating financial exclusion today might find the ground to keep painting.
Selected Works
2 works are featured here.
Lee Yuji joined this campaign in solidarity with fellow artists. Every work sold flows directly into the artists' mutual-aid loan fund— a purchase becomes the next month's lifeline for an artist navigating financial exclusion today.
