Jacqueline Hong
Jacqueline Hong makes surreal images in which darkness is balanced by beauty. Their work includes body horror, strange creatures, and existential subject matter, but the unsettling elements are never used simply for shock. They are part of a broader investigation into difficult experience, emotional tension, and the place where hopeful and disquieting impulses meet.
Hong has made art throughout their life without pursuing formal art training. Instead, they trained in medicine and now work as a psychiatrist. The discipline of medical school and psychiatric residency, while demanding, became integral to their development as an artist. Years of sustained work taught them persistence and structure, while their clinical career has provided a deep familiarity with the complexity of human experience and the weight of personal stories.
As a child, Hong drew cartoons with a lighter, more optimistic tone. As adult life became more complicated, the work moved toward darker and more surreal imagery. The shift was a way of addressing existential concerns directly, while preserving an element of visual care and even tenderness. “I don’t like making gross things for the sake of being gross,” Hong explains. “There has to be a reason for the darkness.”
That balance is now central to the practice. Hong describes recent work as existing between light and dark, a space they regard as one of the most compelling parts of life. The imagery asks viewers to remain with discomfort while noticing the formal beauty that can emerge within it.
Their approach to work has also changed substantially over time. Hong once waited to feel energized or motivated before beginning a piece. Medical school made that approach impossible. Long hours and competing obligations required them to work without the guarantee of ideal conditions. Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art reinforced this commitment to making work despite resistance or fatigue.
Now Hong creates even after demanding workdays or during periods of low motivation. The act of beginning tends to generate its own energy. “When you’re truly obsessed and devoted to something, it doesn’t feel like a sacrifice,” they say. This conviction has turned routine into a form of access, allowing the practice to continue despite the constraints of a medical career.
To avoid the paralysis of an empty page, Hong records ideas continuously, through writing and quick sketches. By the time they sit down to make a work, they have a catalogue of images and ideas available. This habit also reflects the accumulated emotional material of adulthood. The intensity of medical training and psychiatric residency, combined with the limited time available for art during those years, left many ideas and feelings waiting to be developed. Hong now works from that reserve.
Success, for Hong, is not primarily measured through accolades or visibility. It lies in creating a response, stirring emotion, or allowing an image to remain with a viewer. They remain wary of the pressure to pursue what performs well online, arguing that the strongest work comes from truth and authenticity rather than algorithmic approval.
Hong frames this as a question each artist must confront for themselves: what recurring memory, dream, or concern refuses to disappear? The answer may not produce the most immediately popular image, but it can lead to work that feels necessary to make. In Hong’s practice, that necessity is what gives darkness its purpose and beauty its force.
