When Joyce Lee was a child growing up in Seoul, South Korea, her parents would work long hours. When school finished, she and her brother spent time with a babysitter who would draw a different picture for the siblings every single day. Watching her etch outlines and fill in shapes with colours as a piece came to life, Joyce and her brother found themselves inspired and would do their best to copy the designs – spending hours and hours of their free time drawing. “I was constantly in awe,” Joyce says. “I was inspired to draw manga, which I did day and night.”
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As the siblings got older though, their interests diverged. While her brother decided to go to art school, Lee found herself more drawn to films, music and literature. She ended up studying English language and literature at university and spent time working for an airline afterwards. While continuing to paint in her time off, Joyce found herself drawn back to those childhood impulses and decided to dive back in. “I began to feel my interest and passion for art rise up inside me again quite strongly,” she says. “I finally quit my job and went to art school.”
Having decided to pursue art and painting full time, Joyce will soon release a debut book of her work via Baron Books — a deep dive into the sensual depths of her brain. Using predominantly watercolours and pencil, her art juxtaposes everyday objects with the extraordinary, exploring sex, desire and the forbidden.
The paintings are full of visual innuendo — a woman lying among peaches, a ripened banana facing skywards, bees crawling over nipples — which flit rapidly between being arousing and quietly discomforting. They portray attraction and desire, all the while hinting at the vulnerable — and potentially jeopardous — nature of sex; for instance a hedgerow of penises with long, sharp blades of grass extruding from their tips.
Joyce found her talent for drawing the erotic largely by accident. “One day I whimsically tried combining a human hand and foot with a woman’s breast and man’s genitalia and the visual effect of the strange and bizarre creature was surprisingly intense,” she says. “The number of followers on my social media increased after posting. After that, I tried adding more of a story and concept to my artworks and they have been more and more positively received.” At first, she was hesitant to share her raunchier work on her social media accounts. “I have only used English hashtags when I post my art on Instagram,” she says. “Maybe I was afraid of the reaction in the community about my art, even though Seoul is a very modern and sophisticated city.”
“Young people are very progressive in many ways,” she continues. “But it can be seen as an act of rebellion to say publicly something like: ‘I love erotic art’ or to follow an art account with a lot of erotic content or nudity.”
The artist’s wariness is understandable. The South Korean government has censorship control over various forms of media, including the internet, and pornography is banned and penalised. But worldwide social media is less controlled, allowing her to find “freedom”. “Looking at my artworks, people used to ask me where I’m from,” Joyce says. “If I answer ‘Seoul, Korea’, they are always surprised. People think my artworks are too provocative for an Asian female artist.
But her following continued to grow, and Joyce got her first break when someone from the USA reached out to her. “At the beginning, I painted and uploaded my small works on social media as a kind of hobby,” she says. “One day Playboy contacted me for a commission — I was lucky to be able to start my career with such a famous brand.” While the sexual nature of her work certainly fits the Playboy bill, in many ways, Joyce’s work continues in the tradition of the surrealism art movement which was particularly influential in the early 20th century. Characteristic of many of the style’s most notable artists were their provocative, often disconcerting use of everyday objects placed within almost dreamlike settings.
“I would say [my biggest influences are] Salvador Dali and René Magritte — the great surrealist artists,” she says. “Their paintings are very creative and imaginative, yet their work is grounded deeply in classical art techniques. Dali especially made meticulous use of this, influenced by Renaissance era painters, which contrasts with the fantastical world depicted in his art.”
Despite looking backwards for inspiration, Joyce’s own work is very much of the present. Her paintings are filled with easter eggs which remind the viewer that the work was created in the 21st century — from a tongue piercing on a nun about to receive sacramental bread, to a skyscraper cityscape in the background. “I want people to find something unexpected when they look more and more into my painting,” she says. “The familiar objects make it easy for the audience to understand the story and feel comfortable. You can see a lot of beautiful women with elegant looks on faces drawn in a traditional way in my works,” she continues. “But they’re badass women in what they do.”
For Joyce, her first print book is an affirming moment — coming full circle since she originally took the plunge to quit her job and enrol in art school. “Sometimes I was confused about whether I was a real professional artist or just a lucky influencer on social media,” she says. “I’ve always thought social networks would not last forever, which means my work in the online world will vanish as well. To have my own physical book is very meaningful.”
Baron by Joyce Lee will be published by Baron Books, pre-order here.
Credits
All images courtesy of the artist and Baron Books