Sungsook Setton

Sungsook Setton is a Korean-American artist and calligrapher. Besides her training in brush painting and calligraphy under Chinese and Korean masters, she has also studied Western art in Germany, the UK and the United States, obtaining her BA in Studio Art at Stony Brook University and MFA in interdisciplinary art at Goddard College. Setton's work has been widely exhibited in Canada, the UK, Taiwan, Korea and the United States. She has received two dozen awards for her work, including twice Best of Show at the National Juried Exhibition by the Sumi-e Society of America. In 2010, she represented the U.S. at the Third International Biennial of Modern Ink Painting in Taipei. She serves on the faculty of Westchester Community College, the China Institute in Manhattan.

My work has been deeply influenced by artistic traditions of East and West, drawing from art training in Europe, the US, and my native South Korea. In my painting, which can be seen as a form of organic expressive abstraction, I seek to provide a meditative space for people to breathe and grow. I see my ongoing transition from representation to minimalism as a perpetual process to capture the essence of things. In the language of taoist philosophy this represents a tra...