DAVID CHOONG LEE

Artist David Choong Lee was born in 1966 in Seoul, Korea. He moved to the USA in 1993 in pursuit of gaining the skills to be a traditional fine artist. He found that he was very interested in the art of young people after his graduation from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, in 1997.

After seven years of focusing on the figure, he began to explore different concepts, such as mixed media, sculpture and graphic design. He's been influenced by such diverse sources as Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Sukdo, and underground music DJ scenes. He ended up creating his own artistic style that is a combination of graffiti, collage, portrait, and classical realistic skill with bold graphic elements. As you can see by the release of his products, he has combined many different forces to create his own, distinctive style.

David's work has shown at many galleries in San Francisco such as 111 MINNA GALLERY, BUCHEON gallery, CULTURE CACHE gallery, LEVI'S as well as other places in the US and also in South Korea. He has self-published a number of art books– God made dirt, and dirt don't hurt, 4 WORDS, DIRT– and some of his books are distributed by Gingko Press and 2nd round productions to Europe and Asia.

He’s been teaching figurative art at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco for last 10 years (from 1998), and he lives in downtown San Francisco with his wife.