I’m Yulim Choi, a Korean American painter based in Orange County, California, blending digital processes with traditional painting. Drawing from graphic design, I use abstraction and color as both structure and emotion. Bold, saturated palettes are my first language, holding confidence and vulnerability, playfulness and restraint all at once.

My work often begins digitally, where I explore composition and rhythm before translating ideas onto canvas through scale, texture, and gesture. While the paintings are visually loud, that intensity is intentional, It acts as both shield and signal, a surface that conceals as much as it reveals. I’m interested in how visual noise can feel intimate, how boldness can mask quieter emotional states, and how abstraction can communicate what language cannot.

Rather than offering explanation, my work invites experience. I create through curiosity and experimentation, and I am seeking opportunities for exhibitions, collaborations, and creative roles where bold visual language and emotional resonance coexist.

A woman in a black dress and high-heeled boots standing in an art gallery, viewing a large abstract painting of human figures on the wall.

About Me

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Artist Statement

My paintings come from moments when I’m trying to understand myself through color rather than language. I’m drawn to bold, saturated palettes and large scale because they feel immediate, almost physical, like emotion made visible. I use intensity not just to grab attention, but to see how far color can carry feeling before it becomes overwhelming, and what happens in that space.

Much of the work lives in contradiction. The surfaces are loud, playful, and confident, yet they also protect something softer underneath. I’m interested in how abstraction can hold both at once, how something can feel open and guarded, joyful and uneasy, stable and shifting. Painting becomes a way for me to sit inside those tensions without needing to resolve them.

These works aren’t meant to explain anything clearly. They’re closer to emotional snapshots, moments of identity, uncertainty, and energy caught in color. I hope viewers spend time with the paintings, noticing how their own feelings shift alongside the surface, and discovering for themselves what feels loud, quiet, familiar, or unresolved.