Kim Lacy: Paintings Before Words

Kim Lacy paints before words. Between New York, Seoul, and Brooklyn — *Dialogue of Silence*. Before mind, before thinking, before any language.

Kim Lacy, Dispersing 3, 2025, oil on canvas, 60.6×60.6 cm

Before drawing, Kim Lacy steadies her breath. That stillness before lifting the brush. The moment when thought has not yet become language. That is where her work begins.

Finding a Language Between New York and Seoul

After graduating from Seoul Women's University (Western painting), Kim Lacy crossed oceans. She completed an MA at Nottingham Trent University in the UK, and an MFA at Pratt Institute in the US. Through galleries in New York, Chicago, Vienna, and Miami, she has participated in over 90 exhibitions at home and abroad.

But more important than geographic movement was an internal shift. After learning painting's framework through representational work, she turned to abstraction. Letting go of form, she raised line and color themselves as subject. That decision changed everything.

Her Dialogue of Silence series (2010–2012), begun at a gallery in Brooklyn, was the first turning point. Silence and dialogue. Two paradoxical words paired in a title — and her paintings spoke deeper by not speaking.

Before Mind — The State Before Language

Read the series titles in reverse and you get a poem.

Before Mind, Before Thinking, Before Any Words. Before mind, before thinking, before language. The artist tries to hold the quiet stretch before consciousness intervenes onto the canvas.

Her method isn't simple. Lines cross each other; color layers stack. Her choice of oil over acrylic has its reason. Oil is slow. It takes time to dry. Within that slowness she lays the next layer. Time layers within one painting.

Grand Prize at Gallery Hanok's 2022 Emerging Artist Open Call, followed by multiple selections. The density of the work began to be recognized outside.

Dispersing, Returning, Scattered Light

Kim Lacy, Returning around 2, 2025, oil on canvas, 19×19 cm

Her recent works in SAF follow three movements. Dispersing, return, scattering of light.

Dispersing 3 holds energy bleeding out beyond the surface. Returning around 2, inversely, converges inward. Scattered lights 2 and Scattered lights 3 — light bursts across the surface.

Sizes vary — 60.6×60.6 cm squares to 19×19 cm small works. But a single breath runs between them. The artist's state of mind when the brush met canvas is embedded in the surface.

Where Art Becomes Language

Kim Lacy currently focuses also on the extension of art education. An artist drawing the state before language handing that very language to others. Seemingly contradictory, but it touches art's essence.

Contributing to SAF runs in the same grain. If art is a language that connects, it must reach many, not a selected few. Sale revenue becomes a mutual-aid fund returning as low-interest loans to artists facing financial discrimination. So that peers' creation can continue.

Before drawing, Kim Lacy steadies her breath. That breath goes onto the canvas, and from the canvas returns, as someone else's breath.