November Artist of the Month
Meet Jennifer Park
Artist, Jennifer Park, grew up in Gyeonju, South Korea during a period of economic decline for the country. From a very early age she loved to draw and paint and became well-known in her town for her artistic ability. She won many competitions and was encouraged by all who knew her to pursue an education in art. Park remarks, “I prepared for art school in high school but in South Korea you don’t send your portfolio to schools but rather have live competitions for admission.” She was accepted and completed art school at Keimyung University.
After graduation, in a worsening economy, Park was unable to find a job so she attended architecture school on scholarship. She was able to get only a part-time job in architecture and had many expenses which led her to start teaching students and painting for trade: both selling portraits and doing book illustrations. “The pay for illustrations was very low at the time and I finally had to get a ‘real job’ in a Korean bank. It was a very good learning experience.”
Park met her husband who is also an architect, married six months later and moved to the United States. “We share a love of museums and travel but after moving to America I became very isolated because my English was so bad that I couldn’t even order a coffee. Once again, life was very difficult. It took me six years to get a green card and 5 more years to get citizenship.” During that time, Park attended school in Brookline to study English and Art. “I took so many classes in art and drawing and, after getting my green card, I taught private art lessons to adults.”
The artist also got a license in Cosmetology and became a hair stylist but found that this did not satisfy her need to create. She and her husband have a daughter, now seven, and two years ago, she was forced to leave the workplace due to the COVID pandemic. This was the perfect opportunity to begin painting again and her goal is to be a full-time artist. She is now taking courses at Mass Bay Community College in Early Childhood Education with the hope of teaching art to children. She already enjoys drawing and painting with her daughter.
“I am focusing on oil painting and watercolor and I spend a lot of time drawing from sculptures at the MFA.” While she loves the Impressionists and the post-Impressionist work of Gaughin, she prefers to paint realistically. She would like to introduce us to her favortie Korean artists, hyper-realist painters Young-Sun Kim (https://www.facebook.com/100vun) and Jung-Hwan An (https://www.facebook.com/artduryan).
Park’s subject matter is evolving with her life experience. “I have always liked landscape, where nature and man-made buildings meet. Now my mind is changing a bit. I am very interested now in the faces of working-class people of different cultures, the passing of life that can be seen, and I am getting ready to start portrait work again.”
