Caroline Ji

  • My current work centers around emotional intimacy, self-perception, and how human beings relate to each other. My colour choices are deliberately strong and chromatic because I am a person who feels her emotions to the fullest. There is a delicate balance between reason and emotion in my paintings, which results in my interest in succinct but still loose brushstrokes. If it can be said with 2 strokes, I don’t want it to be 3.

    The subject matter of my paintings have varied over the years, but my fascination with people and faces have not changed much. These models are people around me; I love getting to know people and figuring out what makes them uniquely them, and to find a way that translates this relational experience onto a painting. Even in my still-life and landscape paintings, I am trying to paint the human experience with them rather than without. Each painting is a conversation I have with myself and that I’m trying to have with the viewer.

Caroline Ji is an oil painter based in Toronto, Canada. She received her undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo in 2012. With no formal institutional training in art, she learned painting by taking individual classes and workshops with artists she liked, the vast resources on the Internet and libraries, and by observing life and her own thoughts about it. Her paintings are collected across North America, Europe, and Asia. She has exhibited in Canada, USA, and Australia. She has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, and has completed several artist residencies in Newfoundland, Canada.