Eunju
Park

Korean synaesthetic painter Eunju Park gives colour and form to her experience of music. Her paintings, including works on Hanji, traditional Korean paper, open a dialogue between listening and looking.

To excel in two disciplines that are at once passions and needs of our humanity is a rare blessing. Eunju Park achieves exactly that, weaving together her career as a musician and as a painter.

Born in the heart of Seoul, she has lived and studied in South Korea, Canada and France. She stood out on the cello from an early age; after the prestigious Yewon School and Seoul Arts High School, she trained for some ten years in Paris with masters such as Mstislav Rostropovich, Xavier Gagnepain, Philippe Muller, Florian Lauridon and the Ysaÿe Quartet.

Winner of first prize at the Turin International Competition and first prize for chamber music in Paris, she joined the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra in 2005 and founded the Gaïa Quartet. She performs as a soloist and chamber musician alongside Myung-whun Chung, Emmanuel Pahud, Jonathan Fournel, the Ysaÿe Quartet, Patrick Zygmanowski, Frédéric Moreau and Les Violons de France.

Yet her singularity lies in a rare gift: a synaesthete, polyglot and ambidextrous, she sees music in colour and grasps its syntax. Her painting does not represent sound; it makes it visible.

“Music, that sublime abstraction, becomes visible and tangible under my brush. Capturing the emotion of sound through colour is my language, where words fall short.”

Eunju Park · Artist’s note