Meet Johee Young | Artist & Visual Art Teacher

We had the good fortune of connecting with Johee Young and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Johee, why did you decide to pursue a creative path?
I grew up attending an International school in Tokyo my entire life, spoke a language foreign than my own, and constantly saw people come and ago. I think that played into my personality. There was a lot going on around me and art was a way for me to visualize the world and communicate. I took art classes all throughout high school, but it wasn’t until my freshman year of college that I decided to commit to art for the rest of my life. It was actually my freshman year where I met my art professor, specifically in painting, and she ended up being my mentor through my entire college career. She believed in me, in my skills, and invited me to travel to Italy to learn more about the origins of art.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I don’t love to categorize or pigeon hole myself as a certain type of Artist. I don’t want to say I’m just a landscape painter, or a feminist painter, or an abstract painter. I could be all of them without being bound to a certain type of style. I think that’s what brings me a lot of freedom. My paintings in the past were a lot to do with nature and landscapes, but as I got older, I saw a lot of value in finding a balance with my art. Trying to find the balance of not only being images of nature but also a component that was personal to my identity that the viewers are able to access. I think that is why I stopped painting strictly landscapes for a while, and moved onto abstraction and animal portraiture. I moved onto abstract paintings, a place to contemplate, to visualize the world in a whole different way. Compared to painting landscapes where you know exactly what you’re seeing, abstraction allowed for me to fully express my emotional world without fully revealing what they were exactly about to the viewers. They got to contemplate through their subjective lens instead and that made abstract art exciting. I think we as humans are ever evolving, and as long as we are changing, our art is also changing. While I still occasionally paint landscapes, today I focus mainly on abstraction and animal portraiture. I went into animal, specifically dog portraiture in the past year. It started off as painting portraits of my own dogs. On a day to day, they just seem like pets. But on canvas, they transform into this regal being and I think that was my take on painting dog portraits. I wanted a large scale, and the point was to humanize them in a way. We project our own human emotion and feelings to our animals, so what does that look like? What started off as a mere curiosity ended up turning into a whole series.

After grad school, I went off to become a contemporary art gallery curator in Los Angeles. I found Artist locally, and internationally to show their work, and it was a great experience to be behind the canvas for once and see how that world operates. I was there for a little over a year, and decided this wasn’t the career path for me. After receiving my master’s in art. I felt as though as I wasn’t fully applying my knowledge and skills to my career. In the past year, I switched over to teaching. I never saw myself as an educator, but it wasn’t until I realized the importance of art that I want to become an educator. I wanted to teach the upcoming Artists how to build and create their own discourse, how to tell a story and communicate through different mediums, and what does it mean to have something that they are passionate about, and to pursue that with confidence.

My biggest lesson was to overcome the fear of trying to become one thing and categorize yourself as a particular artist or person. It’s not realistic, at least for me it’s not. It doesn’t fit into my lifestyle, and what I value. I am an Artist and also an Art Educator. You can be all the things you want to be, you just have to care about it.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Los Angeles is a magical place because it is the one city where it feels like there are cities within cities. Each area has their own personality and flavor. If a friend were to visit, I would hand her this itinerary:

1. Getty Villa in Malibu or the Getty Museum.
2.. Hauser and Wirth in Downtown LA (Not only the permanent collection is amazing, the architecture and interiors are also worth the visit)
3. For drinks, I would go to Gran Blanco in Venice, Laurel Hardware in West Hollywood, and probably Great White (American), Kazunori (Japanese) , Republique (French), Colada (Thai) for food.
4. I would take them on this super special secret hike, I don’t even think it has a name but it is in the Pacific Palisades and you turn into the neighborhood right where you see the country club and it has these steps you have to climb and it’s a pretty rewarding view.
5. El Matador beach if you’re wanting to escape the crowd or first point (Malibu) if you want to be with the crowd.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I would like to show gratitude to my art comrades in grad school. Xiou Ping and Christopher Stoltz, two of the most amazing artists I know. From painting to photography to documentary film, sound and performance art, Xiou Ping opened my window of opportunity that anything is possible. Stoltz, he’s a go to for anything film and beyond. I barely knew how to operate a film camera or understand the physics of light and aperture until I met him let alone how to critique a photograph.

Website: https://www.joheeyoung.com

Instagram: @jojochanx

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joheeyoung