Kelly Haejung Paik, Ph.D., was born and raised in Seoul, Korea, and lives and works in Seattle, Washington. Immersed in art from an early age through her parents' passion for collecting and their ties to Korea's artistic community, she came to her own practice by an unusual road: a two-decade career as a scholar, professor, and broadcast journalist.

 

She began as a journalist and broadcaster at the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) in Seoul, earned a Ph.D. in Mass Communications from the S.I. Newhouse School at Syracuse University, and taught at the university level for twenty years. Along the way she discovered that the ideas she studied — how perception shapes meaning, how culture moves through form — demanded visual expression. She has maintained an active art practice since 2003 and turned to full-time studio work in 2022.

 

Working across painting, mixed media, sculpture, and public art, Paik explores the intersection of Korean cultural heritage and contemporary abstraction. Traditional forms — the moon jar, bojagi, Ilwolobongdo, the five colors of obangsaek — serve as points of departure rather than historical references. Through geometric abstraction, layered color, and spatial reconfiguration, her work examines how cultural memory evolves across time, geography, and identity.

 

Her work is held in the King County Public Art Collection and the Mary Bridge Children's Hospital Campus Collection. She is a recipient of a 4Culture Art Projects Grant, a Shunpike Storefronts artist residency in downtown Seattle, and appointments to the Washington State (ArtsWA) and City of Seattle public artist rosters. Her paintings, illuminated sculptures, and installations have been presented in public, institutional, and invitational exhibitions throughout the Pacific Northwest and internationally.