Korean-Canadian paper artist Christine Kim lives and works as an artist and arts educator north of Toronto. Exploring portraiture by combining drawing and painting with delicately cut and layered paper, Kim creates mesmerizing works of art that elegantly capture the soul of their subjects. Working within the genres of illustration, paper art, collage, and installation, Kim’s love for paper as medium is apparent.
The interplay between the layers – and the shadows they cast – offer the viewer moments of stillness and movement, fragility and solidity, rigidity and organic flow.
The interplay between the layers and the shadows create moments of stillness and movement, fragility and solidity, rigidity and organic flow – and endless discoveries
Through Kim’s signature process of collage making, the artist examines the surface, shape, and volume that both conceals and reveals the figure. The interplay between the layers – and the shadows they cast – offer the viewer moments of stillness and movement, fragility and solidity, rigidity and organic flow. Fascinated by the “tension of a heavy stillness, a pregnant pause, and often describing her work in terms of volume and weight”, Kim, also as art educator, points out the importance of training one’s eye to think critically about aesthetics, composition and concept, while considering the authenticity of your own voice as an artist. Working mostly with thicker stock paper, which gives stability for her lace-like cut works, she combines both digital and manual cutting techniques (cutting machine as well as various cutting tools) to create work that balances her playful exploration with strategic composition – always leading to new discoveries.
Follow the artist on Instgram for more inspiration.
Images © Christine Kim