artist of the week :: david choong lee

David Choong Lee was born in 1966 in Seoul, Korea. David arrived in San Francisco from Seoul, Korea in 1993 with little money and speaking very little English but found a way to study art. While studying he lived downtown where he was surrounded by homeless people who became the focus for his painting for many years). They became his friends, helped him with his English and in turn he used his formal drawing skills to capture very moving portraits. He found that he was very interested in the art of young people after his graduation from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, in 1997.
After seven years of focusing on the figure, he began to explore different concepts, such as mixed media, sculpture and graphic design. He's been influenced by such diverse sources as Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Sukdo, and underground music DJ scenes. He ended up creating his own artistic style that is a combination of graffiti, collage, portrait, and classical realistic skill with bold graphic elements. As you can see by the release of his products, he has combined many different forces to create his own, distinctive style.

see more of david's work on his photostream or his website

thanks to matt lucci for the heads up on this week's artist.