Inside an airy, brick-walled studio, Saelee Oh takes a moment to gaze at her corner workspace. It’s nearly bare now. Her desk and shelves have been cleared out, and most of her pieces are either tucked away into a storage unit, hanging in a local gallery or resting in the homes of collectors.
See, the Los Angeles artist recently went through some major life changes and decided that a two-month-long solo trip to Buenos Aires would do her good. After that, she’ll move to Brooklyn and from there, who knows? These are the kinds of leaps you take when you’re 26, free-spirited, and can see the world as, well, a blank canvas.
“I made a list of things I want to do before I die,” says Saelee, grabbing her notebook and skimming through the pages. “Open a boutique, build a treehouse, make a 200-foot-long painting, fly a plane. I wrote down ‘Visit one different country every year,’ but I think I’m going to bump that up to two. I’m at a period in my life where I’m hungry to do everything.”
Such are the aspirations of a girl who’s used to creating her own storybook world. Her works, which fuse mediums such as graphite, acrylic and watercolor paints, paper and thread, are thoughtfully crafted stills from her whimsical imagination. At her gallery shows from L.A. to New York to Japan, viewers are whisked away into a dreamlike oasis where dandelions sprout from books, smiling sea creatures pick flowers from the soil, kittens and horses emerge from burrowing holes, hat-wearing birds carry umbrellas, and girls nap peacefully under trees. Reality suddenly seems overrated.
“It’s an escapist thing, I guess,” Saelee says of her illusory renderings. “When I’m telling a story, that’s when I can create things from scratch.”
Her own story begins in Woodland Hills, Calif., the Los Angeles suburb where she grew up. The eldest of four girls, Saelee escaped the pressures that come with being a first-born by immersing herself in her drawings. In class, while the teacher lectured, she would doodle on her desk or in the margins of her notebook paper. “I was a daydreamer,” she recalls. “I just drew whatever was in my head.”
Saelee’s parents nurtured her talents, taking her and her sisters to a weekly art class held in the garage of a Korean woman in the neighborhood. “We got to do anything we wanted in that garage. We put on plays. We made masks. We made ornaments, dioramas, paintings. It was something I always looked forward to.”
She continued with art through high school and then enrolled in the illustration program at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif. Her peers and teachers kept encouraging her and toward the end of college, she scored her first gallery show at the New Image Art Gallery in West Hollywood.
