Bio
Ellee SY Lee is a Korean-Canadian, Toronto-based painter creating imaginary, semi-abstract works that explore diverse visual experiences. She immigrated to Canada as a teenager and discovered her love for art-making during that time. She felt that painting, in particular, was a free form to have a profound connection to her subconscious and emotional state. She received her BFA from OCAD University in 2006 and pursued abstract art for several years. However, her personal circumstances led her to return to Korea, where she paused her art for nearly a decade. Upon returning to Canada, she rekindled her passion for painting and has been participating in art fairs and exhibitions since 2023.
Art Practice
The central theme of her work is the dynamic flow of life and nature, reflecting the fluidity and vibrancy of existence within an interconnected world. It captures the beauty and harmony of life’s continuous movement and blurs the boundaries between the seen and unseen, evoking a sense of mysticism, dreaminess, and reflection. Her inspirations come from personal memories, nature, world views, and art history - including Eastern traditional landscape, Post-impressionism, Les Nabis, Spiritual abstraction, and Post-pop landscape.
Oscillating between abstraction and representation, her work embraces naturalness, simplicity, and spontaneity. Nature motifs such as mountains, waters, and trees recur throughout to embody the natural rhythms and cycles. In organic and intuitive ways, she orchestrates layers of simplified shapes and lines, bold colours, shifting perspectives, mark-making, flatness, and texture, reveling in the surprises that unfold during the process.
Lee is intrigued by the strange aspect of painting which imparts a sense of connectivity and sensibility. She finds painting can console the individual soul and offer a vicarious escape and a moment of respite from a fatiguing world.
Series of Works
1. Innerscape Series:
The Innerscape series is a meditative vision of her inner world. These works are maps of the unseen, where imagination and intuition converge into semi-abstractions through layered brushwork and flowing organic shapes, This series draws inspiration from the Korean traditional landscape, “San Su Hwa” - painting of mountains and water - which expresses the spirit, essence, and rhythm of nature through spontaneous mark-making and simple lines. The artists of this tradition often created their works based on imagination rather than direct observation, drawing upon their inner visions, emotions, philosophical reflections, and spiritual connection to nature. Lee approaches this series in a similar way, expressing the life-energy of things, the personal longing for nirvana-like escape and her hope for a world in harmony.
2. The Way Things Are Series:
The ‘The Way Things Are’ series is inspired by the Eastern philosophical teaching that accepting the nature of things and all phenomena as they are in the moment helps reduce suffering. With this perspective, irregularity and the uncontrolled are allowed in order to feel the immediacy of presence and flux. It is less about fixed conclusions and more about process, chance, and transformation. Vibrant colours, shifting patterns, and dynamic forms mirror the impermanence and interconnection of all things.
3. Walking With You Series:
The Walking With You series reconfigures the beauty of surroundings and reinterprets personal memories . It unfolds as a choreography of colour and form, offering a reminder that life’s pathways are never walked alone.