Jade Jwa
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Artist Bio
Jade Jwa (b. 1979, Seoul, South Korea) is a Los Angeles–based figurative painter working primarily in oil. Drawing from memory, lived experience, and everyday observation, her paintings examine how emotion is held in everyday gestures, silence, and physical distance rather than openly expressed. Having grown up in Seoul and spent most of her adult life in Los Angeles, Jwa's experience between cultures informs her sensitivity to memory and the spaces between people.
Through layered surfaces, restrained compositions, and softened forms, she creates paintings that invite sustained looking rather than immediate resolution. Her figures often occupy ambiguous spaces in which the boundaries between remembered experience and present observation remain uncertain. Rather than narrating specific events, Jwa uses painting to explore how experiences persist, shift, and become intertwined with the present. Her practice seeks to create images that remain open to interpretation, allowing viewers to encounter their own associations with memory, distance, and belonging.
I paint figures in ordinary, often quiet moments—waiting, moving, turning away, sitting, or simply occupying a space. I am interested in the small gestures and pauses that reveal something about a person without explaining who they are or what they are experiencing. Rather than constructing a clear narrative, I use these moments to create paintings that remain open to interpretation.
My figures are often isolated or partially obscured, and their expressions don't offer an easy emotional entry point. I am interested in this distance between the viewer and the figure: the desire to understand another person and the recognition that we can never fully access another person's inner life.
Working primarily in oil, I develop paintings through repeated layers, scraping, and reworking. I allow forms to emerge and recede within the surface, using muted color, soft edges, and shifts between description and atmosphere. Increasingly, I want the surrounding space to carry as much weight as the figure itself. The resulting paintings hold a moment without fully explaining it, leaving room for the viewer to construct their own understanding.
Selected Group Exhibitions
2027
Winter 2027 Show, Online Exhibition, Penn Journal of Arts and Sciences (PJAS) (upcoming)
2026
GAP 2026, International Juried Online Exhibition, 5th Annual Gallerium Art Prize
Succession, Online Exhibition, California Art League
All Media 2026, Studio Channel Islands Art Center, Camarillo, CA
Time Capsule, Create! Magazine x PxP Contemporary, Virtual Exhibition
US Diaspora, Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Ana, CA
POV (Point of View), organized by LAUNCH LA, Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles, CA
Likely Story, Online Juried Exhibition, Los Angeles Art Association (LAAA)
Quiet, Los Angeles Makery, Los Angeles, CA
Small Time, Online Juried Exhibition, Los Angeles Art Association (LAAA)
Root and Branch, Los Angeles Art Association (LAAA), Gallery 825, Los Angeles, CA
2026 VTAG Artists, Online Exhibition, TAG Gallery (VTAG)
2025
The Spaces Between, Glendale Community College Art Gallery, Glendale, CA
Bibliography
Art Seen Magazine, Winter 2026 Issue (forthcoming)
Women United Art Magazine, Issue XV, Autumn 2026, The Curator’s Pick (forthcoming)
GAP 2026 Exhibition Catalogue. Gallerium Art Prize. Biafarin, 2026
Time Capsule Exhibition Catalogue. Create! Magazine x PxP Contemporary, 2026
Awards / Honors
3rd Place Award, Succession, California Art League
Center for Cultural Innovation (CCI) Quick Grant Award
Residencies
Plexus Projects Remote Artist Residency, January–February 2027 (upcoming)
Memberships / Affiliations
Los Angeles Art Association (LAAA), 2026–present
TAG Gallery (VTAG), Los Angeles, 2026–present
California Art League, 2026–present
Education / Professional Development
Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Visual Arts, UC Berkeley Extension (In Progress)
Certificate in 2D Studio Art, Glendale Community College, Glendale, CA, 2025
Certificate in Graphic Design, Glendale Community College, Glendale, CA, 2023
M.S. in Accountancy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, 2005
B.A. in French Language and Literature, Seoul National University, South Korea, 2003