Anna Hyunsook Paik

Winner of the Garrick/Milne Prize 2003, Anna Hyunsook Paik is recognised as an artist of great distinction. Born in Seoul, South Korea, Paik studied the art of drawing and painting firstly with Auseklis Ozols at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts and completed her study with Sidney Goodman and Will Barnet at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Honoured at both Academies with merit scholarships, Paik also won numerous prestigious prizes including the highly coveted William Cresson European Travelling Prize, Benjamin West Prize and Thomas Eakins Prize.

After completing her studies, Paik was immediately offered a solo show at the Academy Gallery in New Orleans in 1991 which launched her career as a professional painter. Since then Paik has participated in numerous group shows including C.A.N. Gallery in Philadelphia, Stuart Levy Gallery and Gallery Korea in New York and worked on many private commissions.

In 1997 Paik moved to London and was given her first London solo exhibition in Cork Street W1 in 1999. Paik's works have been shown in London at the annual exhibition of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters at the Mall Galleries, the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, BP Portrait Prize 2003 at the National Portrait Gallery and the Garrick/Milne Prize at Christie's. In 2003 Paik won the first prize in the Garrick/Milne Prize, a national painting competition, for her painting titled "Rehearsal at RADA", voted unanimously by the body of jury members which included both the Surveyor to the Queen's Pictures and the Director of the Dulwich Picture Gallery. It now hangs in the Garrick Club's Permanent Art Collection.

Paik's favourite subject matters are nudes, still-life and portraiture. In pursuit of paintings of great depth and timelessness, Paik works to capture the lasting power of life with personal symbolism.