Mona
Lee

My love for autumnal colours perhaps has started when I was very little. My mum kept clumsy line drawings of two year old and showed them to me later. There were yellow, ochre, brown, blue and green on the papers. We had some bandages, syringes and an assortment of medicines at home when I was a child because of my parents' professions. My sisters and I used to play with them as if they were our toys.

For my first degree, I studied Linguistics at Korea university. I liked semantics and semiotics in particular. I love writings of Umberto Eco and Pascal Quignard because they touched upon thoughts on fragments of stories and symbolisms. After graduation, I studied in a design foundation course and in a black and white photography course. Then, I realised that I wanted to study art more in Europe. I moved to London and studied painting at Chelsea College of Arts and Central Saint Martins for 5 years. As an exchange student, I stayed in Berlin for 5 months and painted in the class of professor Bernd Koberling at Universiät der Künste Berlin. I am nostalgic about London and Berlin where I enjoyed making paintings and traveling other places in Europe. During my study, I caught cervical cancer. I had two surgeries because of it. Luckily, I didn't have to have chemotherapy to recover from it.

Because of my love for languages, I learned German quite a long time and travelled to many places in Germany. I worked for a daycare centre for people with learning disabilities. I taught them paintings and enjoyed it very much. The job needed patience because they had Down Syndrome, Autism and Cerebral Palsy. I was so happy that they listen to me and liked my teaching. Afterwards, I hoped to become a catholic nun and travelled to convents in England. I observed that it is also a good life that the nuns lead in quietude and prayers.