Snake, enlightened.

Stephanie S. Lee was first introduced to Minhwa, Korean Traditional folk art painting, during her visit to South Korea in 2010. Since then, Lee has been working on various drawing and painting works influenced by Korean folk art.

Minhwa is a decorative everyday art containing love, dream, belief in fortune, wish for longevity and happiness that transcends all religious beliefs. Its informality and symbolic expressions convey various feelings of happiness, love and delight in everyday life. Bright colors are used to reflect purity, and to ward off evil while symmetrical composition shows harmony that enrich people’s lives.

Using the spiritual and visual elements adopted from Minhwa, Lee’s work shows balanced symmetrical form containing symbolic images. Lee’s use of vivid colors add richness to her work while forming strong contrast between spaces. Her work also has feminine side with decorative lines and repetitive patterns that create elegance and splendid emphasis on symbolic images.

In this very first painting of her experimental work, Lee wants to relate herself as a snake about to ascends to become a dragon. Her animal sign in chinese zodiac is a snake, and year 2013 is also a snake year. Since Lee decided to start painting in this very year, she wanted to express beginning of her enthusiasm and ambition as an artist in her first painting - 'Snake, enlightened.'

Each painting is symmetrical so it can be displayed in several different ways.