▲ Artist Kim Hee-sue

Kim Hee-sue is a professor, counseling psychologist and artist. She cures people with cognitive behavioral therapy. She reads metaphors and symbols of objects and colors in pictures like she reads books. Kim’s works help to cure one’s mind through self-growth and with support of others through appreciating pictures. 

In the <Wall> series, for example, the wall means blocking, the plant means a clue to reconciliation and the sky means harmony. Through the series, the wall becomes lowered, the plant becomes thickened and the sky becomes wide. This is a process of severance to communication and segregation to embrace, explains Kim. The <Dream of a Fish>, for another example, symbolizes a longing for unknown world and it arouses a sensitivity and a cognition of oneself. Kim used to draw real objects such as flowers. Now she is drawing pictures that help her find herself. 

Middle Aged Ask, Psychology Answers

Kim is the organizer of ‘The Good Family Making’ and a positive psychologist who believes ‘The Existence of Change and Growth’. She has taught students as a counseling psychology professor at a graduate school of Hansei University  for 18 years and is a mother of two children. She has written many books including a bestseller <Middle Aged Ask, Psychology Answers>; the book is melted with her own experience as a middle aged woman and her fight against psychological hardships. 

Early this year, she held a month long exhibition at Sinbang Library in Cheonan City under the title ‘Life of Middle Aged’. It was the 11th exhibition which included 30 works printed on <Middle Aged Ask, Psychology Answers>. The visitors were allowed to leave their messages of appreciation and it made the exhibition more communicative. 

Communication with the world

It is not easy for Kim to do a number of professions at the same time: counseling psychologist, professor, writer and artist. Yet she has endless energy and passion to carry them all of which the art in particular gives her a haven where she put down a day’s fatigue and stress. Kim once gave a serious thought about what she wanted to do. She majored in Korean literature and liked poems and novels very much. Eventually though, she chose art. She also has served as the vice-chairman of the Korean Counseling Academy and has been working at the graduate school as the head of student counseling center. 

When asked about future plan, she said “I want make my students as professional counselors. I also want to pass down my knowledge, knowhow and experience to talented young professors when I grow old. If I add two more things, I will write more essay books for both scholars and ordinary people and I will hold one exhibition a year.” 

“I might spend more time on painting when I grow old. And the works might be melted with my life philosophy in abstract images. Art is a channel to find myself and I want to be remembered as an artist who spread true communications between the people.”

▲ 김희수 작품-푸조나무-겨울석양