Bo Kim is a  Seoul-based painter shaped by both Korean and American cultures. She was trained in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she completed both her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2017 and her Master of Arts in Teaching in 2018.

Her work has been the focus of a series of solo exhibitions in Seoul, including “Lifelines, 생명선” (BHAK, 2025), “Impermanence” (BHAK, 2022), “아로새기다, When Light is Put Away” (BHAK, 2021), “Embracing the Moment” (Gallery Ilho, 2021), “HPIX x BO KYUNG KIM” (HPIX Dosan, 2020), “Surface of Calmness” (H Contemporary Gallery, 2020), and “Beauty of Imperfection” (Gallery DOS, 2020). 

Her paintings have also been featured internationally in two-person and group exhibitions, from “Breath, Landscape” at Laheen Gallery in Seoul (2023) to presentations at Francis Gallery in Bath and Los Angeles, Bol Gallery in Singapore, Vortic Art online, Handful of Dust at Palmer Gallery and various institutions and galleries across Korea, the United States, and the United Kingdom, situating her work within a broader conversation on contemporary abstraction and sensorial experience.

Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?

My mother has an artistic background, so art has been a natural part of my life since I was four years old. In middle school, I attended an international school where I developed a deeper appreciation for Western art history. Later, when I moved to the United States for college, Seoul became the place I longed for the most, a home I could return to only twice a year. That distance, along with seven years of living abroad, led me to question where home truly is. During that time, I became increasingly drawn to Korean traditional culture and Buddhism, which became the foundation of my thesis and continues to influence my work today.

How do you stay inspired and motivated to create new work?

Nature is my main source of inspiration, but I am also drawn to quiet, fleeting moments that are easy to overlook. I keep an archive of photographs capturing small moments that might otherwise pass by unnoticed and where I can observe the passage of time, such as the glow of a sunset, the gradual shift of leaves changing color with the seasons, the way tree bark slowly cracks over time, and the way rain gathers in small puddles. I often read poems and collect favorite lines from song lyrics that stay with me. At the end of each day, I write a short diary to reflect on my emotions and memories. Words from those entries, as well as fragments from poems and songs, often turn into ideas for my paintings. These small, ordinary moments of observation and reflection are what keep me motivated to create.

How has your artistic style evolved over time?

In Impermanence, I began by exploring how time leaves traces on material. I applied plaster, sand, and paint over a layer of window screen placed on the canvas, allowing them to crack, erode, and fall apart over time. I was drawn to how those subtle changes could quietly reveal the beauty of things that do not last. It was about accepting impermanence not as a loss, but as something natural and inevitable, something that could exist within the work itself.

With When Light Is Put Away, my focus moved inward. I started to express the passage of time through emotions rather than materials. The works came from small, private moments such as writing before sleep, photographing the sky, and capturing quiet feelings that fade as days go by. Using materials from nature such as hanji (Korean traditional paper made from the mulberry tree) and sand, I wanted to record those fragile states that cannot be held but still linger in memory.

That reflection eventually led me to My Tree, which feels like the most personal extension of my earlier work. Watching my parents age made me think about time in a different way, not only what disappears, but what continues. I began to see trees and roots as forms of connection, symbols of love and endurance that run through generations. In these works, impermanence and continuity coexist, speaking about the warmth that remains even as everything changes.

How do your personal experiences and identity influence your art?

I tend to speak and move slowly. Some friends who have watched me work say my gestures seemslow or even inefficient, but I think this temperament naturally shapes my art. It allows me to create pieces that are repetitive and deeply layered. One of my recent large-scale works, Still and Always One, Where Warmth Lingers (5 x 2m), was built through this process, layering paint, hanji, and sand repeatedly to form more than ten layers in total. I could have applied everything at once, but instead, I chose to build it gradually, observing each change as the layers accumulated. Perhaps this patience, or even stubbornness, is what gives the work its quiet strength.

The same rhythm applies when I write about my work. I believe I live a mostly happy life, but there are moments of pain or reflection that come unexpectedly at night. Those moments often become the starting point for writing. It’s not easy to sit down and begin, but once I start working in that heightened emotional state, the most honest and expressive words seem to come naturally. While preparing for the My Tree series, there were moments when I thought of my parents and began to write a poem, and I felt tears welling up as I wrote. Those deeply emotional moments have had a strong influence on both my writing and my paintings.

I often describe myself as both lazy and diligent. It sounds contradictory, but I think it captures me well. My actions are slow, but I devote immense time and care to each step, constantly creating and preparing for exhibitions. The satisfaction I feel when a show comes together is what keeps me going. After releasing that energy, I take time to rest, recover, and gather strength again before returning to the work.

What projects are you currently working on, and what can we expect from you in the future?

The recent series My Tree begins with the aging of my parents, the love within it, and the invisible flow of energy that connects generations. Layering paint and sand on hanji becomes a way to trace how memory seeps through time and how emotion gradually rises to the surface. Moving forward, I plan to explore the visual parallels between nature and the human body, and to weave painting and poetic language together to express emotion with greater depth.

The direction of branches, the flow of the body, the veins of leaves, and the lines of aging skin all connect as one lifeline. Through the diffusion of color, the sediment of sand, and the creases of hanji, I seek to capture the organic rhythm of life and the quiet moment when nature and humanity become one.

Text & photo courtesy of Bo Kim

Website: https://bokim-art.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_boque/