Exclusive Interview with Artist Yuna Park: Finding Beauty In Everyday Life

By Jessica Ye (Jessica Yap)

There is something rather lovely about Yuna Park’s girls.

They may be sitting, eating, laughing, looking out of a window or simply having a quiet moment to themselves, but somehow, they always seem to be in the middle of a story.

Perhaps that is because Yuna does not paint particular people. Instead, her girls are made up of little fragments of feelings and memories, the sort of moments that might otherwise disappear from our minds almost as quickly as they happened.

A delicious bite of cake. A friend saying something so funny that your eyes go wide. The feeling of being the new girl at school and wishing someone would look after you.

These are the little things that Yuna has been collecting through her daily drawings for years, eventually turning them into paintings, illustrations and comics.

Her work has also taken her beyond Korea, including her recent appearance at POP TOY SHOW 2026 in Singapore, where her girls met an entirely new audience.

With more than 17,000 followers on Instagram, Yuna has certainly found an audience for these little fragments of everyday life. But what I particularly enjoy about her work is that you do not necessarily need to know the story behind each painting to recognise the feeling in it.

Rather than asking who the girl is, Yuna wants us to remember when we felt like her.

So, naturally, I wanted to know more.

CT: For someone discovering your work for the first time, how would you describe the world of Yuna Park? What do you hope people feel when they look at your work?

Yuna: I paint the loveliness scattered through everyday life, using the image of girls as my inspiration.

CT: Your characters often capture these very intimate, everyday moments of girlhood. Where do you find inspiration for these little moments? Are they drawn from your own memories and experiences?

Yuna: They come from very small fragments of daily life. Not particular events so much as the temperature of a feeling.

For example, the instant something delicious goes into your mouth, or the moment a friend says something so funny that your eyes go wide.

To hold on to those moments, I have been doing a simple drawing every day for several years now.

At first, I wanted to draw something impressive, but nothing would come to me. So I practised drawing whatever state I was in at that moment, even when I had no idea what to draw.

By doing that, I gradually became able to catch moments that would otherwise just slip away.

When I begin a full piece, I dig back through those drawings, pull out a fragment and expand that moment onto the canvas.

CT: You’ve worked across illustration, animation, games, design and theatre before moving into comics and fine art. Was there a particular moment when you realised that painting and drawing were the things you really wanted to pursue?

Yuna: Drawing was simply fun from the time I was a child. I decided early on that whatever I ended up doing, I would spend my life drawing.

CT: Your characters have such distinct personalities, even when they are simply sitting, looking or going about their day. Do you ever feel that your characters have lives of their own once you start creating them?

Yuna: Yes, I feel that many times.

I begin by drawing with a specific emotion in mind, but partway through, it can feel as though the girl herself wants a particular expression or posture.

When that happens, I follow where she’s going rather than my original plan.

The reason I studied animation in the first place was that I wanted characters to genuinely move and be alive. Now I want that same sense in a single still image.

I paint believing these girls are living on inside the canvas.

CT: You worked with writer David Boriau on Julia la seule, your first full-length comic. What was it like bringing Julia and her mysterious world to life, and what did you discover about yourself as an artist while working on the book?

Yuna: Building Julia’s world with David Boriau was a truly special experience.

Adapting my drawing to the particular narrative rhythm of European comics, or BD, I discovered I could handle a far wider range of emotional texture than I would have realised.

My earlier work had always been a matter of taking one piece of a whole and assembling it. A complete book meant every element of the world had to pass through my hands as an image. The characters, the spaces, the light, the movement of time, all of it.

It was difficult, but I saw it through to the end.

That experience stays with me in my painting now. It is where I found out that even in the stretches where I feel stuck and it is not easy to see ahead, I have it in me to keep the work going.

CT: Is there a particular character or scene from Julia la seule that you feel especially attached to? And if so, what makes that moment special to you?

Yuna: Caitlin, Julia’s friend.

She is the one who looks after Julia when she arrives at the new school, and I remember wishing someone would look after me like that when I transferred schools as a kid.

I drew her thinking about how I looked back then.

The scene I love most is when the two of them go to Julia’s house and wander around the manor together. Time to just play with a friend, with no purpose at all.

That is something that does not come around much anymore, so I found myself missing it even as I drew it.

CT: Your art can feel quite personal, almost like looking into someone’s diary. Do you keep a sketchbook or draw privately just for yourself? What kinds of things end up on those pages that we might never see?

Yuna: Yes, I keep a separate sketchbook for ideas.

It holds fragments of feeling that never became finished work, unrefined expressions and postures. They are sketches thrown down without any regard for the rules of drawing, such as anatomy or perspective.

CT: You recently brought your work to Singapore for POP TOY SHOW 2026. What was going through your mind seeing your characters and creations meet fans in a completely different part of the world?

Yuna: Showing work somewhere new is always frightening and nerve-racking.

It was my first time in Singapore. Watching my characters meet an audience from an entirely different culture was a remarkable experience.

I saw people with different languages and different upbringings laughing at the same things, reacting at the same temperature.

It confirmed for me that an emotion that began somewhere very private can still carry across borders through art.

CT: When you put down your paintbrush and step away from your studio, what does Yuna like to do? Are there any favourite things, places, films, music, food or little obsessions that tend to find their way into your work?

Yuna: I love desserts. Especially slices of cake, tarts and chocolate. After a meal I always have to have something sweet.

I’m forever telling myself I should start a diet, and then thinking, “Just for today, then I’ll stop.”

CT: If you could spend one day inside the world of any one of your own paintings or characters, which one would you choose and what would you do there? 

Yuna: Most of my work captures a moment in a girl’s life, so a specific location rarely shows through.

But there is one piece with a real setting: Time Off. I painted it thinking about the artist’s life I imagined for myself, the “this is how I want to live” picture in my head.

It’s a scene of lying on a sun lounger on holiday, eating something good and sketching ideas for the next piece.

I’ve found that if I do nothing at all and only rest, I don’t actually feel at ease.

A life of resting, but also gathering something from that place to carry into the next work, is ultimately the life I want.

If I could go in for a day, that is exactly what I would do.

And honestly, I think I rather like that answer.

There is something very Yuna Park about wanting to spend the day doing absolutely nothing, while still finding a way to turn that nothing into the next idea.

Perhaps that is also what makes her paintings so easy to connect with. The moments she captures are small, but they are never really empty.

Yuna may begin with her own memories, but once those girls leave the canvas, they become ours too.

Just give me a slice of cake and a sun lounger, and I think I understand.