A reading atelier,
between picture and word
Story and play, life and library fantasy.Painting, illustration, and the review of picture books — held in one place.
Across painting and the page —
an artist who reads as she paints
Cheon Jisu is a mid-career artist whose practice runs across painting, illustration, and the writing of picture-book reviews. From her first solo exhibition 〈Giggle〉 at Moro Gallery, Seoul in 2001 to 〈Library Fantasy〉 at The Space Gallery, Osan in 2025, she has held nine solo and invitational exhibitions.
Her work has travelled beyond Korea. She showed 〈A Midsummer Night's Dream〉 at the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Rome, Italy in 2005, and held a two-person exhibition at Guga Museum in Fukuoka, Japan in 2018. In 2003 she received the Primo Premio (Grand Prize) at the Giovanni Pericone National Art Competition in Italy.
In 2008 she took part in the restoration of the rock paintings at Serengeti National Park, Tanzania — a UNESCO-designated site. In 2021 she published the illustrated review collection 《The Reading Atelier》 (Imagine1000), drawing together the two threads of her work: the picture and the word.
Her paintings are held in the collections of the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Italy, the Rotary Club of Fiuggi in Italy, and the Asia Publication Culture & Information Center, among others. The warm, narrative register of story, play, life, and library fantasy is the place where her painting and her reading meet.
Major themes
- 1
Between picture and word
Painting, illustration, and picture-book reviews held together — a practice where reading and drawing are a single gesture.
- 2
Story, play, and life
From 〈Giggle〉 and 〈Children at Play〉 to 〈The Shape of Life〉 — a warm, narrative register of childhood, play, and living things.
- 3
Library fantasy
In 〈Library Fantasy〉 (2025) the book itself becomes a world — shelves and pages opening into imagined space.
Selected solo exhibitions
- 2025《The Reading Atelier》 (Gallery Yeongtong, Suwon); 《The Shape of Life》 (Gallery Jijihyang, Paju); 《Library Fantasy》 (The Space Gallery, Osan)
- 2024《The Key That Opens and Enters Me》 (Gallery The Way, Chuncheon)
- 2021《The Reading Atelier》 publication-commemoration exhibition (Forest of Wisdom, Paju)
- 2010《Children at Play》 (Art Space H, Seoul)
- 2005《A Midsummer Night's Dream》 (Embassy of the Republic of Korea, Rome)
- 2001《Giggle》 (Moro Gallery, Seoul); 《Time & Space》 (Artist Guild Space gallery, Paris)
Awards, writing & collections
- Two-person exhibition 《A Way to Make Energy for Living》 (Guga Museum, Fukuoka, Japan, 2018)
- Awards: Primo Premio, 4th Giovanni Pericone National Art Competition, Italy (2003); Special Selection, University Art Exhibition, Honam University (1997)
- Mural restoration: rock paintings of Serengeti National Park, Tanzania — a UNESCO-designated site (2008)
- Picture-book reviews: 〈Cheon Jisu's Reading Atelier〉 in Sports Kyunghyang (2016–2020); 〈Picture Books Cheon Jisu Read〉 in Chaekirout, Culture News, and MHN Sports (2023– )
- Collections: Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Italy, Korean Catholic Church in Rome, Rotary Club of Fiuggi (Italy), Asia Publication Culture & Information Center, Korea Culture Content Research Institute
Three essays —
on the picture, the page, and play
1Between picture and word — a practice that reads
Most painters keep the studio and the desk apart. Cheon Jisu does not. Across her career, painting, illustration, and the reading of picture books have run side by side, each feeding the other. To read a picture book is already to look at images; to write about one is to translate looking into language. Her work lives in the space between those two acts.
That doubled practice took public form in her picture-book reviews — first in the 〈Cheon Jisu's Reading Atelier〉 column in Sports Kyunghyang from 2016 to 2020, and later in 〈Picture Books Cheon Jisu Read〉 across several outlets from 2023. The reviewer and the painter are the same person, looking with the same eye.
2Story, play, and life — the warmth of the surface
The titles trace a single sensibility. 〈Giggle〉 (2001), her first solo exhibition, names a sound before it names a subject — laughter, play, the small joy of children. 〈Children at Play〉 (2010) and, much later, 〈The Shape of Life〉 (2025) keep returning to the same warm ground: living things, in motion, at ease.
It is a deliberately gentle register, and a difficult one to sustain. Warmth without sentimentality asks for precision — in colour, in the weight of a line, in what is left out. Across two decades her surfaces have held that balance, narrative without being illustrative in the lesser sense, inviting without being thin.
3Library fantasy — when the book becomes a world
In 2021 Cheon Jisu published 《The Reading Atelier》 (Imagine1000), gathering her picture-book reviews into a single volume. The book is not a sideline to the painting; it is the painting's other half, the place where looking becomes a record.
Her recent exhibitions follow that thread to its conclusion. 〈Library Fantasy〉, shown at The Space Gallery in Osan in 2025, lets the book itself become a world: shelves and pages opening into imagined space, the place where one reads turned into a place one can enter. The atelier and the library, by now, are the same room.
Beyond Korea, her work has crossed borders — to Rome, to Fukuoka, to a UNESCO-designated park in Tanzania where she helped restore ancient rock paintings. The thread that holds it together is steady: an attention to images as things that carry stories, and to stories as things worth keeping.
From 〈Giggle〉 to 〈Library Fantasy〉, Cheon Jisu's work pursues a single question: how do a picture and a word hold a story between them? She joins this campaign not as a subject of its cause but as a fellow artist in solidarity — offering her work so that those navigating financial exclusion today might find a way through.
Selected Works
6 works are featured here.
Cheon Jisu 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.
