Young Hee Sung
Toronto
Bio
Young Hee Sung is a multidisciplinary artist and the founder and director of Laird Art Gallery in Toronto. Her work combines Korean brush painting with Western abstraction through a practice she calls Brush Densityism — building surfaces through the slow accumulation of countless dots, lines, and brushstrokes, giving shape to memory, emotion, and time. Her work spans themes of environment, healing, and cultural identity, connecting the personal with the shared.
Painting is the foundation of her practice. As a gallerist and curator, she develops exhibitions that merge visual art with the written word, and founded Laird Art Link — a gathering of artists and writers whose creative voices converge through talks, collaborative projects, and cross-disciplinary events.
She has exhibited in Toronto, Los Angeles, New Jersey, and Seoul, with invited solo exhibitions at City of Toronto public galleries including Cedar Ridge Creative Centre Gallery and Assembly Hall Gallery, and at Ajax City Hall, as well as at her own Laird Art Gallery. She has presented at ICOM-CC: Routes to Resilience, an international conference of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), and participated in a public diplomacy project funded by the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs introducing Korean art and culture to North America. Her work on the intersection of art, environment, and spirituality is forthcoming in the Handbook of Sustainability and Spirituality, co-authored with an environmental scholar.
Since 2019, she has led healing art programs in partnership with nonprofits and schools including All Seeds Academy and MFCC, drawing on her graduate studies and personal experience to connect inner life, intergenerational experience, and shared cultural space through art. As a member of the Ontario Society of Artists (OSA) and the Korean Artists Society of Canada (KASC), she engages in ongoing cultural dialogue between Korean and Canadian contemporary art communities.
Painting is the foundation of her practice. As a gallerist and curator, she develops exhibitions that merge visual art with the written word, and founded Laird Art Link — a gathering of artists and writers whose creative voices converge through talks, collaborative projects, and cross-disciplinary events.
She has exhibited in Toronto, Los Angeles, New Jersey, and Seoul, with invited solo exhibitions at City of Toronto public galleries including Cedar Ridge Creative Centre Gallery and Assembly Hall Gallery, and at Ajax City Hall, as well as at her own Laird Art Gallery. She has presented at ICOM-CC: Routes to Resilience, an international conference of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), and participated in a public diplomacy project funded by the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs introducing Korean art and culture to North America. Her work on the intersection of art, environment, and spirituality is forthcoming in the Handbook of Sustainability and Spirituality, co-authored with an environmental scholar.
Since 2019, she has led healing art programs in partnership with nonprofits and schools including All Seeds Academy and MFCC, drawing on her graduate studies and personal experience to connect inner life, intergenerational experience, and shared cultural space through art. As a member of the Ontario Society of Artists (OSA) and the Korean Artists Society of Canada (KASC), she engages in ongoing cultural dialogue between Korean and Canadian contemporary art communities.
Oil
Acrylic
Sculpture
Other
Practice / Theme
Life, Environment, Memory, Time, Faith, Hope, Family, People, Nature,...
Artist Statement
My practice begins in painting. Working through Brush Densityism, I build surfaces by layering countless dots, lines, and brushstrokes without empty space. This slow accumulation forms a visual rhythm that is both structural and meditative, giving shape to emotion, memory, and time — and to the environment that surrounds and shapes us.
My sculptural works did not emerge as a separate discipline; they are extensions of painting into space. The density I construct on canvas naturally expands onto three-dimensional forms. The gestures, layering, and surface-building of my paintings continue in these works, allowing the logic of painting to move beyond the flat plane. For me, sculpture is not a departure but a spatial unfolding of painting.
I collect dried paint fragments and overlooked remnants from my palette — materials that would normally be discarded — and transform them into new forms. These fragments contain traces of color, movement, and time, and their reuse reflects my interest in giving new meaning to what is forgotten or left behind.
Writing also accompanies my process — not as a separate practice, but as a continuation of the painting itself. The poem is already inside the work; writing simply gives it words. Sometimes these writings evolve into exhibitions that pair painting with poetry, allowing image and language to deepen each other.
Painting, sculpture, and writing are all part of one continuous vocabulary — rooted in painting and expanded through accumulation, transformation, and the quiet recovery of what might otherwise be lost. Beneath it all, Brush Densityism has become more than a method — it is a philosophy of living. Just as a painting is built one stroke at a time, life too is made of accumulated moments: not always easy to hold, but possible to continue.
My sculptural works did not emerge as a separate discipline; they are extensions of painting into space. The density I construct on canvas naturally expands onto three-dimensional forms. The gestures, layering, and surface-building of my paintings continue in these works, allowing the logic of painting to move beyond the flat plane. For me, sculpture is not a departure but a spatial unfolding of painting.
I collect dried paint fragments and overlooked remnants from my palette — materials that would normally be discarded — and transform them into new forms. These fragments contain traces of color, movement, and time, and their reuse reflects my interest in giving new meaning to what is forgotten or left behind.
Writing also accompanies my process — not as a separate practice, but as a continuation of the painting itself. The poem is already inside the work; writing simply gives it words. Sometimes these writings evolve into exhibitions that pair painting with poetry, allowing image and language to deepen each other.
Painting, sculpture, and writing are all part of one continuous vocabulary — rooted in painting and expanded through accumulation, transformation, and the quiet recovery of what might otherwise be lost. Beneath it all, Brush Densityism has become more than a method — it is a philosophy of living. Just as a painting is built one stroke at a time, life too is made of accumulated moments: not always easy to hold, but possible to continue.
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