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Sparrows Between Movement and Rest
Sparrows recur throughout Mikyung Lee’s paintings as familiar yet easily overlooked figures of urban life. Rather than treating them as decorative motifs, Lee uses these small birds to reflect the emotional conditions of contemporary life.
Some appear to move beyond the edge of the frame, carrying a sense of departure, curiosity, and the desire for freedom. Others remain close to flowers and vessels, settling into spaces of familiarity and ease. This contrast between movement and stillness becomes central to Lee’s work. Her sparrows embody the tension between wanting to move forward and wanting to remain where one feels secure.
In this way, the sparrow becomes a modest but resonant stand-in for the individual navigating the rhythms of the city.
Saekdong as a Structure of Coexistence
Color is equally important to Lee’s work. Her vivid arrangements draw from saekdong, the traditional Korean use of distinct colors placed side by side.
Lee does not approach saekdong simply as a decorative reference. Instead, she translates its structure into a way of thinking about coexistence. Each color retains its own identity while contributing to a larger whole, much like individuals sharing the same urban space without losing their differences.
Within these fields of color, sparrows, flowers, and vessels come together in compositions that feel both familiar and slightly removed from everyday reality. The city is not represented through architecture or streets, but through the relationships between colors, objects, and living forms.
Layering, Erasure, and the Passage of Time
Lee builds her paintings through repeated acts of layering and removal. Color is applied, revised, and partially erased, leaving earlier traces beneath the final surface.
This process gives the work a sense of accumulated time. What has been covered is never entirely lost; it remains embedded within the painting. The surface becomes a record of adjustment, memory, and duration.
Light, shadow, flowers, and objects emerge within these layers without settling into a single fixed moment. For Lee, painting is not only a process of adding form, but also of allowing previous states to remain present.
Finding Meaning in the Ordinary
Despite their vivid color, Lee’s paintings resist spectacle. Their focus remains on small, familiar moments: a sparrow pausing near a vase, light falling across a flower, or a quiet arrangement of everyday objects.
These scenes invite a slower kind of looking. Rather than directing the viewer toward a single narrative, Lee creates spaces in which attention can settle. What might otherwise go unnoticed becomes briefly significant.
Her work suggests that happiness may not lie in extraordinary events, but in the act of noticing what is already close at hand. Through sparrows, color, and layered surfaces, Lee turns the overlooked rhythms of everyday life into moments worth pausing for.
Curious to see more of Mikyung Lee’s work?
🌐 Visit the artist’s website
📸 See more on Instagram
