Shinah Lee

From a very young age, Shinah could never imagined her life without art playing a big part in it. 

Originally from South Korea, she moved to Montreal at the age of thirteen. Confronted with the excitement of discovering a different culture, different faces and different landscapes, the quiet and discreet teenager embarked on a fantastic journey of artistic exploration. 

Having entered into adulthood and feeling ready to earn her place in Montreal’s rich artistic community, she enrolled in the Art Program at Dawson College. She pursued further studies in Graphic Design at the University of Quebec in Montreal in 2002. She continued to be inspired by the bustling social environments that make up Montreal and she further refined her artistic sensibilities by drawing hundreds of sketches capturing the city’s unique energy. 

While working as a graphic designer, her curiosity about all aspects of graphic arts helped develop her technical skills, of which she already had a natural talent for, in color, texture and composition that she would implement into her paintings. Following the death of her father, her paintings took an unexpected emotional dimension. In her mourning, Shinah needed an outlet to create a legacy for her father: “This led me to paint flowers as a metaphor for a lifetime which is sometimes calm, energetic, and mostly focused on love.” The abstracted flowers have become the central icon in Shinah’s work, as they represent the emotional world imploding and exploding in the endless carousel between life, love and death. 

Shinah begins her work on the floor as the gravity from the brush is more conducive to the happy accidents that gives the pigments freedom to become a backdrop. She then rotates her canvas on the wall until the flower itself is alive and blooming up on the surface. Lastly, she adds colors through quick and instinctive gestures as a performance on the canvas to develop the emotions of the composition. Shinah’s paintings are inspired by images and vibrations she perceives in her surroundings. They are not just florals but a spontaneous emotion by which she shares her love for life.